Indo-French climate satellite set for Oct 12 launch

Megha-Tropiques, the novel Indo-French climate satellite, is planned for launch on October 12.

The 1,000-kg satellite - a combination of the Sanskrit ‘megha' or cloud and the French word for the tropics - will give a better understanding of the crucial convection systems, humidity in the tropics, said ISRO's Chairman, Dr K. Radhakrishnan.

ISRO and French National Space Centre (CNES) equally share the project that was conceived in the late 1990s.

The satellite, with around Rs 80 crore worth of Indian contribution including the satellite bus and launcher, is being moved to Sriharikota on September 14 for launch on a PSLV rocket, Dr Radhakrishnan announced on Saturday.

Increase frequencies

According to Dr R.R. Navalgund, Director, Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad, it was now a challenge to forecast tropical weather or rainfall even three-four days in advance due to the vagaries of tropical atmosphere; the temperate zone countries could do 12-day forecasts. Megha-Tropiques was expected to change this.

Dr Navalgund said the present satellites had a repeat visit over a region once in 35 days; this satellite would return six times a day.

“Everyone is eagerly looking forward to having these frequencies.” It would be put in an orbit of over 800 km from Earth's surface and was built to last five years.

The role of the project was enlarging and it was set to join the Global Precipitation Constellation Mission (GPCM) being put up by the US and Japan.

The GPCM itself had got postponed and Megha-Tropiques would give its sponsor countries a scientific edge.

low-Earth orbit

It carries four key instruments, one called MADRAS being developed by ISRO. A national and an international team of 21 investigators each would study the data.

Dr V. Jayaraman, former Director or Earth Observation Systems at ISRO HQ and the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, who was closely involved in the project, said this was the first of its kind in the low-Earth orbit and there was worldwide expectation of it.

The payload development had been honed over the last six years.

What started as a bilateral project is going to be a multilateral one.

The turbulent tropics were the missing link in understanding global warming, climate change, and phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina.

Megha-Tropiques should give an integrated global picture of the tropics 20 degrees north and south of the Equator, in a band ranging from South-East Asia through Africa and South America. Its data would form a big scientific base for the country.