Speaker
Dr
Steven Dewitte
(RMIB)
Description
The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium has a long history in space instrumentation with in total 11 space flights with 6 different instruments for the measurement of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) since 1983. It also has expertise in the measurement of the Earth Radiation Budget with the data processing of the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget instrument since 2003. In this talk I will present the future RMIB space projects Diarad/Joim on FY3E and the Simba cubesat project.
FY3E will be the 5th satellite of the Second Generation Chinese operational meteorological polar satellites FY3, with foreseen launch in 2018, and it will be the first operational meteorological polar satellite in the early morning dusk/dawn orbit with 6/18 equator crossing times. This orbit is similar to the one of Picard, and is ideally suited for solar observation. Moreover, the design lifetime is 8 years, which makes it ideally suited for long term solar observation. The RMIB, with its partners Latmos and Bira, will deliver a DIARAD instrument as part of the Joint Irradiance Monitoring (JOIM) experiment on FY3E. This instrument will continue the very successfull TSI variability monitoring of the DIARAD/VIRGO instrument on SOHO since 1996. For an improved determination of the absolute value of the Solar Constant, the instrument will have a variable aperture geometry allowing to compare the classical geometry with an inner precision aperture to the alternative TIM type geometry with an outer precision aperture. Finally, the instrument will have a broadband IR filter to measure the absolute level of the solar IR spectrum.
Altough it is generally accepted that the climate on earth is changing due to a radiative energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, up to now this radiation imbalance has not been measured directly. The measurement is challenging both in terms of space-time sampling of the radiative energy that is leaving the earth and in terms of accuracy. The incoming solar radiation and the outgoing terrestrial radiation are of nearly equal magnitude - of the order of 340 W/m² - resulting in a much smaller difference or imbalance of the order of 0.5 W/m². The only way to measure the imbalance with sufficient accuracy is to measure both the incoming solar and the outgoing terrestrial radiation with the same instrument. The RMIB and its partners KUL, ISIS, the University of Stellenbosch, Latmos, ROB, VUB, Belspo and ESA are currently developing the Sun-earth IMBAlance (SIMBA) In orbit Demonstration cubesat to test out the new idea of measuring the incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial radiation with a single instrument on a cubesat specifically designed for this instrument. The instrument is the adaptation of the DIARAD type radiometer to a Wide Field Of View radiometer. The currently foreseen launch for Simba is in 2018.
Summary
The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium has a long history in space instrumentation with in total 11 space flights with 6 different instruments for the measurement of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) since 1983. It also has expertise in the measurement of the Earth Radiation Budget with the data processing of the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget instrument since 2003. In this talk I will present the future RMIB space projects Diarad/Joim on FY3E and the Simba cubesat project.
Primary author
Dr
Steven Dewitte
(RMIB)
