The Formosat-3/COSMIC satellite constellation, a Taiwan-US collaboration, officially retired yesterday, with the Formosat-7/COSMIC-2 constellation taking over its weather observation mission, the National Space Organization (NSPO) said yesterday.
The six-satellite Formosat-3 constellation, an international collaboration project between Taiwan and the US with joint efforts of Taiwan's National Space Organization, was launched on April 15, 2006, atop a Minotaur rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The Formosat-3, consisting of six microsatellites, the first meteorological satellite constellation in the world, is recognized as "the most accurate and stable thermometer in space" by the global metrology community, the NSPO said on Facebook.
Its original mission was to end after five years, but it has far outlived its expected life span, with only one satellite, the FM6, intermittently producing limited meteorological radio occultation data, said the NSPO, an agency under the National Applied Research Laboratories. The six satellites have been operating in space for fourteen years - a total of 5,129 days. A final decision was jointly made by the NSPO and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the Formosat-3's mission will be completed on May 1, 2020.
The Formosat-3 is recognized as "the most accurate and stable thermometer in space" by the global metrology community, the NSPO explained. In 2012, the European Medium-Term Forecast Center (ECMWF) analyzed its RO data and reported that it was to be ranked as the fifth-best among all meteorological observing systems, due in part to its contributions to reducing forecast errors by 10%, despite its small volume of data, which only accounted for 2~3% of all the data used in the weather forecast.
The constellation set an excellent lifetime record and has been mentioned in numerous papers featured in leading academic journals, such as Nature and Science, as well as publications focused on atmospheric science and engineering, it added. “As of Monday last week, there are 4,551 registered community users from 92 nations that used the data,” the NSPO said.
NSPO will continue its efforts through the mission of The Formosat-7 constellation, the follow-on mission of the Formosat-3, to continue to provide richer and more accurate meteorological data and make significant contributions to the world. The Formosat-7, which is also comprised of six satellites, was launched on June 25 last year. Data gathered by the Formosat-7 has been publicly available since March 7.
Source: Taiwan News/ NSPO
