The Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) was an instrument launched on

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satellite

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launched in May 2002. It was a four-channel passive microwave radiometer, with one channel at 150 GHz and three channels at 183 GHz. It was very similar in design to the AMSU-B instrument, except it lacked the 89 GHz surface sounding channel. It was intended to study profiles of atmospheric

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and provide improved input data to the cloud-clearing algorithms in the Unified AIRS Retrieval Suite, but the scan mirror motor failed on February 5, 2003. It worked with the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and AMSU-A to form the AIRS Sounding Suite. HSB was manufactured by

Matra Marconi Space Matra Marconi Space (MMS) was a Franco-British aerospace company. History Matra Marconi Space was established in 1990 as a joint venture between the space and telecommunication division of the French conglomerate Matra (Matra Espace) and ...

, Limited (MMS), in the United Kingdom under a contract with the Brazilian

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(INPE).

Instrument characteristics

*Heritage: AMSU-B *Swath: 1650 km *Spatial resolution: 13.5 km horizontal at

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*Mass: 51 kg *Duty cycle: 100% *Power: 56 W *Data rate: 4.2 kbit/s *Field of View: ± 49.5 degrees cross-track *Instrument Instantaneous Field of View: 1.1 degrees circular Table 1: Radiometric characteristics of the HSB {, class="wikitable" , - ! valign="top" , Channel Number ! valign="top" , AMSU-B
Channel Number ! valign="top" , Frequency
(GHz)
! valign="top" , Bandwidth
(at nadir)
! valign="top" , Instrument Sensitivity
NEDT (K)
, - , 1 , 16 , 89.9 ± 0.9 , DELETED , DELETED , - , 2 , 17 , 150 ± 0.9 , 4000 , 0.68 , - , 3 , 18 , 183.31 ± 1.00 , 2x500 , 0.57 , - , 4 , 19 , 183.31 ± 3.00 , 2x1000 , 0.39 , - , 5 , 20 , 183.31 ± 7.00 , 2x2000 , 0.30 , -

History

HSB stopped scanning suddenly and without warning over the Pacific Ocean February 5, 2003 at 21:39 UTC. The most likely cause is an electrical failure in the scan electronics. By design AMSU-B and therefore HSB had very limited hardware redundancy and software update capability.

External links

HSB instrument guideHSB data at NASA Goddard
Atmospheric sounding satellite sensors Space program of Brazil