The Coriolis satellite is a Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Earth and space observation satellite launched from

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg S ...

, on January 6, 2003, at 14:19 GMT.

Instruments

WINDSAT

''WINDSAT'' is a joint Integrated Program Office/

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

demonstration project, intended to measure

ocean The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Indian, Southern Ocean ...

surface

wind speed In meteorology, wind speed, or wind flow speed, is a fundamental atmospheric quantity caused by air moving from high to low pressure, usually due to changes in temperature. Wind speed is now commonly measured with an anemometer. Wind spe ...

and

wind direction Wind direction is generally reported by the direction from which the wind originates. For example, a ''north'' or ''northerly'' wind blows from the north to the south; the exceptions are onshore winds (blowing onto the shore from the water) and ...

from space using a polarimetric radiometer. WINDSAT was developed and managed by the

Space Test Program The Space Test Program (STP) is the primary provider of spaceflight for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Outline of space science, space science and technology community. STP is managed by a group within the Advanced Systems and De ...

Kirtland AFB Kirtland Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base. It is located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator C ...

in New Mexico, designed for a three-year lifetime. It is primarily designed to measure

surface wind direction ( nonprecipitating conditions) with a 25-km

spatial resolution In physics and geosciences, the term spatial resolution refers to distance between independent measurements, or the physical dimension that represents a pixel of the image. While in some instruments, like cameras and telescopes, spatial resoluti ...

. Secondary measurements are Sea surface

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by re ...

moisture,

rain Rain is a form of precipitation where water drop (liquid), droplets that have condensation, condensed from Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water vapor fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is res ...

rate,

ice Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...

and

snow Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water througho ...

characteristics and

water vapor Water vapor, water vapour, or aqueous vapor is the gaseous phase of Properties of water, water. It is one Phase (matter), state of water within the hydrosphere. Water vapor can be produced from the evaporation or boiling of liquid water or from th ...

Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI)

The ''Solar Mass Ejection Imager'' (SMEI) is an instrument intended to detect disturbances in the solar wind by means of imaging scattered light from the free electrons in the plasma of the solar wind. To do this three

CCD camera A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

s observe sections of the sky of size 60 by 3 degree. As the SMEI instrument observes the whole sky, data generated has been used to observe periodic changes in the brightness of stars. This data can be used to detect asteroseismological oscillation in giant stars, and for the detection of large eclipsing extra-solar planets. Windsat

External links

WINDSAT site at NOAA
*

Bibliography

WINDSAT site at NRL

WINDSAT site at ONR

Launch Schedule for ITC
Earth observation satellites of the United States Spacecraft launched in 2003 United States Navy Satellites of the United States Air Force {{US-spacecraft-stub