TRMM
Japan is also a principal participant in the international Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) scheduled to begin in 1997. Japan will launch the 3.5-metric-ton satellite built by NASA into a 350-km orbit with a low inclination of 35 degrees. Accompanying four NASA instruments will be the Japanese Precipitation Radar, operating at 13.8 GHz and sponsored by NASDA with Toshiba as the prime contractor. For the longer term, Japan envisions establishing a Global Earth Observation System comprised of a variety of low and high altitude satellites. One of the new spacecraft joining this fleet is the proposed Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), which may be placed into a 700-km, sun-synchronous orbit by the year 2000 with a synthetic aperture radar and a version of the
visible and near-IR radiometer design from ADEOS (References 585, 597, 601-603).
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