AWS – Arctic Weather Satellite

Precise weather forecasts play a crucial role in our daily routines. It influences choices as essential as selecting clothing and as significant as planning crop harvests, ship routes, flight approvals, and so on. Several weather forecasts have supported humankind for many years, whether for daily life, industrial work, or science. However, is the current weather forecast suitable for our needs?

Mission Objective

The Arctic Weather Satellite will supply frequent Earth coverage, enabling streaming temperature and humidity data at every point on Earth.

Mission Significance

• Enhancing both short-range weather forecasting and numerical weather prediction.
• Meteorologists will utilize the mission to enhance global weather forecasts.

Meteorologists are utilizing the mission to enhance short-range and numerical weather prediction, aiming to improve global weather forecasts significantly. The data and insights gathered from this initiative will contribute to refining the accuracy and reliability of weather predictions on a global scale, fostering advancements in meteorological science, and benefiting communities worldwide. Nowadays, satellites in both geostationary and polar orbits supply meteorologists with abundant data for routine weather forecasting. Nonetheless, there is a persistent inadequacy in monitoring the Arctic region.

Source: ESA

Engineering Challenges

This necessitated overcoming a variety of substantial engineering challenges for AWS:

• Miniaturization and Efficiency – Designing a sophisticated, high-performance science instrument that complies with the strict mass, volume, and cost constraints of the efficient “New Space” platform.
• Instrument Calibration and Noise – Achieving the necessary measurement accuracy for the Microwave Radiometer (MWR) by eliminating stray light and thermal contamination.
• Operation in Polar Orbit – Ensuring long-term reliability against the harsh conditions of a Low Earth Polar Orbit, including continuous exposure to space radiation and the stresses of rapid, extreme thermal cycling.
• Data Transmission and Coverage – Guaranteeing timely and continuous data downlink, particularly from the geographically remote polar region, to meet the goal of immediate numerical weather prediction improvement.

Methodology Overview

The satellite mission components include a 19-channel cross-track scanning microwave radiometer, known as the AWS Microwave Radiometer (MWR). This instrument provides high-resolution humidity and temperature soundings of the atmosphere under all weather conditions. The MWR consists of a rotating antenna that focuses incoming radiation onto four feedhorns and four receivers. Each feedhorn is directed to a slightly different ground point, which will be remapped during on-ground processing.

Source: eoPortal

Acktar’s Solution

Acktar’s Vacuum Black was applied on MWR instrument to aluminum substrates to achieve superior stray light suppression. Engineered to be an inorganic, ultra-clean, and very thin layer, this blackest black coating acts as an exceptionally efficient thermal and stray light sink, reducing platform-generated interference and preventing instrument components from becoming sources of contaminating blackbody radiation, thus maximizing the accuracy of atmospheric temperature and humidity soundings.

Impact

The AWS is set to have a dual impact, technological and meteorological:

•  New Space Approach – Introducing innovative concepts efficiently in terms of cost and time.
• The arctics forecasting will be more sufficient.
• It will bring global forecasting accuracy improvement in general.

This integrated system aims to enhance precise weather forecasting capabilities for the Arctic region!

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