Aqua (satellite)
Overview
The Aqua is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in orbit around the Earth, studying the precipitation, evaporation, and cycling of water. It is the second major component of the Earth Observing System (EOS) preceded by Terra (launched 1999) and followed by Aura (launched 2004).
Mission
The primary mission of Aqua is to collect information about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional data is also collected about radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.
Design
The Aqua spacecraft has a mass of about 2,850 kilograms (6,280 lb), plus fuel of about 230 kilograms (510 lb). The main bus of the spacecraft is approximately 2.68 meters (8.8 ft) high, 2.49 meters (8.2 ft) wide, and 6.49 meters (21.3 ft) long. The bus houses the instruments, command and data handling services, communications equipment, attitude control equipment, and power supply. The spacecraft also has a hydrazine propulsion system for orbit insertion and adjustments, and a reaction wheel system for attitude control.
Instruments
Aqua carries six state-of-the-art instruments in a near-polar low-Earth orbit. The six instruments are the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT), and the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES).
Data
The data collected by Aqua is made available to the public in a variety of formats. The data is used in a wide range of applications, including weather forecasting, climate modeling, vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, volcanology, and fire detection.
See Also
