Formosat-3, a weather satellite constellation jointly developed by Taiwan and the US, is to complete its 10th year of operations next month, and a follow-on program will be launched by the end of this year to replace the aging system, Taiwan’s National Space Organization said.
The system — a constellation of six small satellites — was launched on April 15, 2006, and is the first large-scale space collaboration between Taiwan and the US, where the project is known as the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC).
The constellation has taken more than 10 million soundings — vertical profiles of the atmosphere — since its launch and the data were provided real-time free of charge to more than 3,000 researchers and weather forecasters in 83 nations, the agency said.
According to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Formosat-3 was ranked No. 5 in 2012 among all Earth-observing systems in the world in terms of its ability to help accurately predict weather, reducing the error margin of forecasts by as much as 10 percent, the agency said.
Other than Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau, major weather forecast centers and agencies around the world, including those in Canada, the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Britain and other European countries, have incorporated the data provided by Formosat-3 into their weather forecasting systems, the agency said.
“Data collected by Formosat-3 are especially useful for forecasting typhoons, which is particularly beneficial for Taiwan. Formosat-3 is able to provide accurate observations of water vapor, the ‘fuel’ that allows typhoons to grow, in high vertical resolution. Hence, Formosat-3 has been called ‘the most accurate space thermometer,’” University Corporation for Atmospheric Research community programs director Bill Kuo (郭英華) said.
In its initial stages, the constellation could provide 2,400 pieces of data every day, but now it can only provide 650 pieces of data, as a satellite failed and was decommissioned in 2010 and other satellites have aged, agency Director Chang Guey-shin (張桂祥) said, adding that he was pleased to see that the system has far exceeded its original planned five-year mission and continues to operate into its 10th year and beyond.
Taiwan and the US are collaborating on a follow-up mission, Formosat-7, or COSMIC-2, which consists of 12 mission-specific satellites plus one agency-built satellite, which should be able to collect five times as much data as Formosat-3, Chang said.
The 12 satellites are to be deployed in two clusters of six satellites, in low and high-inclination orbits, by the end of this year and in 2018 respectively, Chang said.
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