A concept of Highly Maneuverable Experimental Space (HIMES) vehicle
- Paper ID
IAF-85-137
- author
- company
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, University of Tokyo
- country
Japan
- year
1985
- abstract
For a few years, CNES has taken a great interest in oceanography from space. The launch by ARIANE in 1989 of the US satellite TOPEX with on board two french instruments will be a milestone of this effort, and thanks to a very efficient cooperation with NASA, it will allow a first joint oceanographic mission. The french payload includes two equipments : a radar altimeter and radiopositionning instrument, DORIS; they provide height measurement of the seas. The altimeter has a design similar to that of previous altimeters (SEASAT), with some particular features. Its pulse length is 100 microseconds, the bandwitch is 330 MHz, and the compressed pulse length 3.03 ns. The power amplification is performed by solid state amplifier, the output power is 2W. The radiopositionning system consists in uplink doppler measurements on signals transmitted from about 50 beacons located all around the earth. High performances and simplicity of the system are allowed by new development in the field of ultra-stable oscillators. Keywords : Altimeter, spaceborne radar, signal processing, radiolocalization systems, doppler localization systems.