The Advanced Geosynchronous Studies Imager (AGSI) system design combines the latest available technologies into an instrument design concept which could deliver the improved performance sought by the National Weather Service at NOAA and meet NASA earth system science goals in a joint program. The instrument could cover the Earth disk every 15 minutes with subsatellite point resolution form 1/2 kilometer in the visible to 2 kilometers in the long wave IR. Simultaneously, it could provide coverage of a 3000 by 5000 kilometer region in 5 minute intervals and 30 second updates of a 1000 kilometer square region containing a weather system of interest. We found that performance margins could be improved even as we drove the design interactions with emphasis on reducing the mass. Scan speed was chosen by maximizing performance while trading off the acceptable impact on the total systems. The resulting 18-channel design could deliver vastly improved performance over the present GOES without great increases in mass or volume, while still paying close attention to control of development cost sand impact on the host spacecraft. The design could be adapted to changed requirements or descoped to have lower data rates and fewer channels.

Date Published: 24 September 1999
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 3750, Earth Observing Systems IV, (24 September 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.363510

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3750:
Earth Observing Systems IV
William L. Barnes, Editor(s)