Arctic Weather Satellite, A Microsatellite Constellation for Improved Weather Forecasting in Arctic and Globally

Arctic Weather Satellite, A Microsatellite Constellation for Improved Weather Forecasting in Arctic and Globally

Utah State University, Logan, UT

A consortium led by OHB Sweden has started the implementation of a prototype satellite for a possible constellation mission called Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS). This constellation of small satellites in low polar orbits would provide frequent coverage of the polar regions to support improved nowcasting and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) of the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The AWS mission is designed to be complementary to the existing polar-orbiting, meteorological satellites (e.g. MetOp and MetOp Second Generation (SG)), providing additional atmospheric sounding information to improve NWP on a global scale. The 120 kg AWS prototype satellite will fly in a ~600km sun-synchronous orbit and is based on OHB Sweden’s InnoSat platform. The payload is across-track scanning, passive microwave radiometer from Omnisys Instruments with 4 frequency bands to provide atmospheric sounding information complementary to the microwave radiometers on MetOp-SG. Global data will be stored onboard the satellite for data dumps over specific regions as well as broadcasted worldwide in real time. The ground segment contains a highly innovative Digital Beam Forming Network (DBFN) ground station from Thales allowing tracking of multiple satellites simultaneously. The final constellation is foreseen to provide data with less than 30-minute latency over the entire Arctic region.