ADEOS
Japan's next major remote sensing satellite undertaking is the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS), slated for launch in 1996 by the H-II booster. The objectives of the program are "to acquire data on worldwide environmental changes such as the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, tropical rain forest deforestation, and abnormal climatic conditions, in order to contribute to international global environmental monitoring and to develop platform bus technology, interorbital data relay technology, etc. which are necessary for the development of future Earth observation systems" (Reference 596).
The 3.5-metric-ton ADEOS will operate in an 800-km orbit with an inclination of 98.6 degrees. Developed jointly by Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba, and Nippon Electric, the ADEOS configuration employs an irregularly shaped bus (3.5 m by 3.5 m by 4 m) with a single solar array (3 m by 13 m) capable of generating a minimum of 4.5 kW during the anticipated 3-year lifetime of the satellite. Hydrazine thrusters will maintain a precise 41-day repeating groundtrack.
An extensive, complex payload consisting of Japanese, American, and French remote sensing instruments is planned for ADEOS. NADSA will directly contribute an Advanced Visible and Near-lit Radiometer (5 bands, 8-m and 16-m resolution, 80-km swath) and the Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner (12 bands, 700-m resolution, 1,400-km swath). The Japanese Environment Agency will provide the Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer and the Retroflector in Space, while the Ministry of International Trade and Industry supplies the Interferometric Monitor for Greenhouse Gases. The three foreign instruments to be hosted by ADEOS are the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (NASA), the Scatterometer (NASA), and the French POLDER (Polarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectance). A follow-on ADEOS mission is tentatively scheduled for 1999 (References 596-600).
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