Joint Airborne IASI Validation Experiment (JAIVEx) at UW-Madison SSEC/CIMSS

From Bob Wells (FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager)

The disappointment over the problems with METOP (IASI is now expected to return to operation late on Monday 30th April) have been counterbalanced by some excellent results from the first flight. Raw radiances and retrieved values have generally compared very well indeed.

Tuesday’s flight (takes off 2320L Monday) in conjunction with the WB57 is targetting cloud observations under an A-train overpass (AQUA, CLOUDSAT and CALYPSO satellites).

A daytime AQUA flight, including a WB57 wing-tip to wing-tip (the WB57 has very long wings) intercomparison, has been pencilled in for Wednesday but current forecasts make this look unlikely to go ahead.

From Bill Smith (WB-57 NAST-I/S-HIS Scientist):

Below is a report that EUMETSAT issued on their web-page earlier today. We will discuss what strategy we should follow for this weeks flights, in view of the MetOp situation, at 2:00 PM today . Your input is appreciated.

We are flying an A-train cloud mission tonight (i.e.,early tomorrow). We will be under-flying the Calypso/CloudSat track (180 nm) until overpass time after which we will fly a rectangular area (100 nm segments) surrounding the A-train ground tracks. BAe-146 will be providing dropsondes, plus other in-situ and radiometric data, along all flight segments. Weather looks good for this cloud mission.

April 23, 2007
Switch-off of Metop-A Payload Module
On Friday 20/4/2007 at 10:14 UTC (12:14 Local), the Metop-A satellite experienced a total switch-off of the Payload Module for no apparent reason. This occurred during a routine Svalbard pass, therefore in visibility.

The root cause triggering this event is not known at time of writing, but the analysis of the available telemetry by the experts seems to point towards a software problem in the Payload Module Computer (PMC) software. The status of all instruments on-board Metop-A was assessed and their safe condition confirmed by the experts.

As a consequence of this payload switch-off, the dissemination of Metop-A products was halted after the last valid orbit. The operational users were informed immediately of the service interruption.

The PMC software was analysed in the mean time and the go-ahead for the restart of the Payload Module Computer software was given. This restart is scheduled for the 23 April a.m. The instruments would then be progressively switched back on in the coming days, as soon as possible.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Status Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.