Brenda Marie Rivers
Harris has developed an environmental-monitoring sensor to be installed in a Japanese government satellite that will work to study greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite-2 that Mitsubishi Electric is building for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency will be launched in the country’s 2018 fiscal year, Harris said Wednesday.
The Harris-built sensor, called the Thermal and Near Infrared Sensor for Carbon Observation-Fourier Transform Spectrometer-2, is designed to enable GOSAT-2 to perform greenhouse gases assessment from space.
TANSO-FTS-2 will serve to generate high-spectral resolution information in five bands to support measurement in daylight and darkness.
Harris said the instrument also features an intelligent pointing system programmed to identify the cloud-free areas of the atmosphere in real time.
The company has delivered two previous imaging instruments to Japan for the Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 weather satellites.
