Satellite
The Megha-Tropiques system is composed of:
- a mini-satellite developed jointly by France and India, which includes:
SAPHIR and SCARAB are cross track scanning radiometer: the scan track is perpendicular to the satellite track and the spots enlarge with the scan angle.
MADRAS is a conical scanning microwave imager: the incidence has to be constant to take advantage of the polarization information. The spot size remains the same but the scan track follows a semicircle.
Orbital configuration of Megha-Tropiques satellite
MP4 Format ~28 Mb (or WMV format ~21,5 Mb)
The Megha-Tropiques satellite was launched by an Indian PSLV launcher on 12 October 2011, on a 867 km orbit with an inclination of 20°.
This orbit and the characteristics of each instrument provide the following time sampling.