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The Latest Launched Satellites
The Latest Launched Satellites
BEIDOU 3M12
AEOLUS is a European satellite hosting a space borne laser crafted to measure winds in Earth's
atmosphere. AEOLUS will gather the first comprehensive worldwide measurements of wind speed—over
oceans and land masses—from Earth's surface to an altitude of nearly 100,000 feet (30 kilometers). Data
collected by the AEOLUS satellite will be fed into numerical weather prediction models, replacing
simulated 'boundary conditions' in the computers models with near real-time measurements from space.
AEOLUS was not conceived by ESA as an operational weather satellite, but forecasters will be some of
the prime beneficiaries of the mission. The mission is named for a figure in Greek mythology who was
appointed by the gods as 'keeper of the winds'. AEOLUS carries a high-power ultraviolet laser fired at 50
pulses per second toward the ground. Light emitted from the laser—the centerpiece of Aeolus's single
science instrument—will bounce off air molecules, aerosol and cloud particles, and Earth's surface. A tiny
fraction of the scattered ultraviolet photons will reflect back toward a 5-foot (1.5-meter) telescope on the
Aeolus satellite. The light will return to the Aeolus satellite's Atmospheric Laser Doppler Instrument—
ALADIN—with a slightly different color. By analyzing the change in color caused by the motion of
atmospheric air molecules—known as the Doppler effect—scientists can derive wind speeds.
Researchers also intend to analyze data from Aeolus to gain a better understanding of how winds are
generated, and how atmospheric currents are linked to changes in Earth's climate.
TELSTAR 19V (Telstar 19 VANTAGE) is a communications satellite with two high throughput
payloads, one in Ku-band and the other in Ka-band. The satellite the second of a new generation of
Telesat satellites optimized to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly being used
across the satellite industry. Hughes Network Systems LLC (Hughes) has made a significant commitment
to utilize the satellite’s high throughput Ka-band capacity in South America to expand its broadband
satellite services. The satellite has additional high throughput Ka-band capacity over Northern Canada,
the Caribbean and the North Atlantic Ocean. It will also provide high throughput and conventional Ku-
band capacity over Brazil, the Andean region and the North Atlantic Ocean.
PRSS 1 is an Earth observation satellite operated by the Pakistani space agency (SUPARCO).
The satellite carries a high-resolution electro-optical payload with designed service life of 7 years. The
satellite is designed, developed and launched in a low Earth orbit by 2018, through cooperation and
collaboration with China. The imaging system ground resolution is 1 m in pan-chromatic mode and 4 m in
multi-spectral mode. The swath width is >60 km.