AbstractThe guidelines of the national and cooperative environmental programmes conducted by CNES are complementarity with third agencies' programmes, synergism between scientific and application projects, and promotion of innovative concepts likely to meet the requirements of the World Climate Research and International Geosphere-Biosphere Programmes. While the on-going SPOT series is to provide imagery of land surfaces until 2000, the TOPEX/POSEIDON altimetric mission is being developed by NASA and CNES for launch in mid-1992 in phase with the WOCE intensive field experiments. The design study of the AVISO ocean data system, and the development on behalf of ESA of the ERS-1-dedicated CERSAT facility are consolidating the French effort in space oceanography. Two other research space missions are studied by CNES and French laboratories. BEST, whose phase A study is nearing completion, is a low-altitude, low-inclination, GEWEX-dedicated mission for the investigation of the water and energy cycle in the tropics, with a target launch date in the late 1990's. The phase A study of GLOBSAT, a more IGBP-oriented mission concept, has just been initiated. The first objective of this mission in polar orbit considered for launch around 1997, is to collect comprehensive data sets needed to document key processes related to cloud/radiation interaction, stratospheric/tropospheric chemistry and dynamics of continental and marine ecosystems. The second objective is to start monitoring long-term trends of parameters required to close global budgets of carbon and ozone. The analysis of this space mission concept is conducted in parallel with the development of instruments of opportunity to be flown onboard foreign satellites, and of airborne sensors, either precursor to space instruments or designed for process studies and validation of space data.
French space programmes related to global change
Advances in Space Research ; 11 , 3 ; 213-226
01.01.1991
14 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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