L3Harris Technologies has awarded a contract to ABB to develop a high-resolution infrared interferometer system for the Himawari-10 satellite.
Earlier this year L3Harris Technologies completed its Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of an advanced imager and sounder it will build and deliver for the Japan Meteorological Agency’s (JMA) new geostationary meteorological satellite, Himawari-10. The satellite is being manufactured by the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
The high-resolution infrared interferometer system ABB is developing will power L3Harris’ next-generation atmospheric sounder for Himawari-10. The satellite will “map in 3D the earth’s atmosphere over the Asia-Pacific region for 10 years.”
ABB said in a press release that with its “interferometer technology, the information gained with the new sounder is expected to be more than 100 times richer than what is available today.”
It was two years ago that Mitsubishi Electric won the contract to build the Himawari-10 satellite from JMA and the fourth consecutive Himawari satellite they’ve built for JMA. The first they built was Himawari-7, 25 years ago, with Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 contracts following in 2009 and Himawari-9 launching in 2016.
ABD described the instrument they will develop as follows. “Atmospheric sounders are high-end optical instruments able to probe the air mass’ physical properties driving weather such as temperature, humidity and movement. The bulk of the digital information ingested by supercomputers calculating today’s daily and hourly forecasts comes from infrared and microwave sounders. While Low Earth Orbit (LEO) weather satellites can map the whole globe, they can only refresh the data twice daily which creates an important temporal coverage shortage. Geostationary (GEO) weather satellites on the other hand ‘stand still’ in the sky over the equator and can track weather pattern evolution with a much-improved refresh rate. However, Geostationary orbits are too distant for companion microwave sounders to operate making the IR sounders the sole instruments able to capture a time-lapsed digitized 3D view of the weather below.”
Dr. Frederic Grandmont, Space Technology and Business Development Manager, ABB Measurement & Analytics said, “Hyperspectral IR sounders, introduced for the first time in 2011 on the joint NASA/NOAA polar-orbiting NPP satellite, led to a transformation in the field of weather forecasting. Himawari-10 is expected to bring another level of improvement in weather forecasting accuracy for Japan and the Asia Pacific region, and the rest of the globe as long-term 14-day forecasts have global dependencies.”
This isn’t the first time ABB has teamed up with L3Harris. Starting in 2011 ABB provided six interferometers for the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) for what was known at the time as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project.
Details on the value of the contract were not released.
