The first image from Japan’s new weather satellite, MTSAT-1R, has
now been successfully received and processed by the new ground
facilities at the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)’s Hatoyama centre,
100km north of Tokyo.
MTSAT-1R was launched on 26 February 2005 to provide regular weather
images and data over the East Asia region. The facilities to process
data and correct them for dissemination to the user community were
supplied by LogicaCMG under contract to NEC Toshiba Space Systems, Ltd.
(NTSpace).
The payload data ground segment processes the MTSAT-1R images in
real-time, applying radiometric calibration, removing minor distortions
by automatically analysing landmark features in the image, and then
disseminating the corrected images to users within a few minutes.
Mr Takashi Ohshima, Head, Office of Meteorological Satellite Planning,
of JMA said “This successful processing of images is an important
milestone in the MTSAT programme to replace the Geostationary
Meteorological Satellite (GMS) series covering the East Asia and the
Western Pacific regions.”
Mr Hideki Kimura, MTSAT-1R image data processing system manager, of
NTSpace said “The ground facilities are crucial to ensuring that
MTSAT-1R data meets the timeliness and quality requirements of the
meteorological user community. The complex real-time software required
to process the MTSAT-1R images was supplied and supported by LogicaCMG
and is significantly more sophisticated than the software for previous
series of Japanese weather satellites. The performance of the whole
MTSAT-1R system including the ground facilities is a new breakthrough
in weather satellites.”
LogicaCMG credits
Picture shows LogicaCMG landmark processing.
Note that the scale of the arrows is exaggerated compared to the MTSAT-1R image scale