Future High-Performance Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer Systems

Identification of Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer Calibration Sites for Satellite Missions

The first dedicated soil moisture satellite mission will be the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. This satellite, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2009, has a new type of satellite design that is based on the radio-astronomy technique of simulating a large antenna from a number of smaller ones placed some distance apart. Because of its unique des...

Radiometrics MP 3000 Microwave Radiometer Performance Assessment

TOPEX microwave radiometer performance evaluation, 1992-1998

The stability and accuracy of the TOPEX Microwave Radiometer (TMR) measurement of the atmospheric path delay due to water vapor is assessed over the interval from launch (August 1992) through June 1998. Detailed global comparisons are made with path delays derived from the special sensor microwave imager (SSM/I) instruments and a network of 15 island radiosondes. The results provide consistent ...

High Performance Computing Systems for Autonomous Spaceborne Missions

Future generation space missions across the solar system to the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets may someday incorporate supercomputers both to expand the range of missions being conducted and to significantly reduce their cost. By performing science computation directly on the spacecraft itself, the amount of data required to be downlinked may be reduced by many orders of magnitude, thus ...

Topographic Effects on the Surface Emissivity of a Mountainous Area Observed by a Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer

A simulation study to understand the influence of topography on the surfaceemissivity observed by a satellite microwave radiometer is carried out. We analyze theeffects due to changes in observation angle, including the rotation of the polarization plane.A mountainous area in the Alps (Northern Italy) is considered and the information on therelief extracted from a digital elevation model is exp...