From FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC to FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 Mission: A New Era of Operational GNSS Radio Occultation Constellation Observing System
Presenter:
Chen-Joe Fong
FORMOSAT-3 Program Director
FORMOSAT-7 Program Director, NSPO Director General
Invited talk
FORMOSAT-3 / COSMIC launched in 2006 was the first constellation observing system to collect the atmospheric and ionospheric parameters employing GPS radio occultation technique. It is a Taiwan-US international cooperation program, executed by NSPO and UCAR respectively. The advantage of constellation observation is to provide the capability to sense a huge amount of data over the globe with the same satellite configuration. Through constellation deployment, the users can obtain geographically homogeneous distributed measurements. FORMOSAT-7 / COSMIC-2 consisting of six satellites is the follow-up program of FORMOSAT-3 / COSMIC. It is a joint program under AIT/TECRO agreement; NSPO coordinates the responsibilities of Taiwan team and NOAA is the representative of the U.S. team. The mission aims to collect more than 4000 sounding profiles at low- and mid-latitude regions every day with 45- minute data latency. The satellites planned to be launch on June, 2019. These six satellites will be sent to a low-inclination-angle orbit by a rideshare Falcon-Heavy launch to collect data at low and middle latitudes. The paper will provide an overview of the FORMOSAT-7 / COSMIC-2 mission, L&EO checkout and verification and validation preliminary results of the spacecraft before the mission data to be available to the users seven months after launch.
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