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2met!® Hard- and Software Successfully Received High Data Rate Broadcast from Suomi NPP

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) spacecraft was launched successfully already in October 2011.

The Suomi NPP High Rate Data (HRD) Broadcast has recently been activated. Since Friday, February 23 2012 the 2met! Satellite Reception systems located at SCISYS in Bochum, Germany, have received the NPP HRD data.

Suomi NPP is carrying various payloads of scientific instruments to monitor the atmosphere, land and oceans of the Earth. The data will be sent to earth via X-Band transmission.

SCISYS’ digital satellite receiver for X-Band missions (DSRIII) has been successfully upgraded to enable the reception of Suomi NPP HRD. The new 2met!® POLAR Acquisition software V4, running on a Linux server, has been used to decode the data stream and store data from the instruments VIIRS, CrIS and ATMS in Level-0 files – compliant to NASA’s raw data record (RDR) format as defined for NPP.

These Level-0 files could be used as input for higher level processing software, like the International Polar Orbiter Processing Package (IPOPP; NASA Direct Readout Laboratory) or the Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP; CIMSS University of Wisconsin-Madison). SCISYS supports the integration of those processing packages with 2met! Acquisition POLAR Software.

The data from the VIIRS instrument has been visualised and verified with the software tools Simulcast Services and Viewer v5.0 offered by NASA Direct Readout Laboratory.

More information

Additional Links

2met!® Products and Solutions from SCISYS
NASA Suomi NPP Mission
NASA Direct Readout Laboratory
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison