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CryoSat was an ESA satellite that was launched October 8, 2005. Its launch ended in failure, when the second stage engine of a modified russian SS-19 ICBM did not cut-off as planned.[1][2] It was proposed in 1998 by Duncan Wingham of University College London. This article is about the European Space Agency. ...
A satellite is an object that orbits another object (known as its primary). ...
October 8 is the 281st day of the year (282nd in leap years). ...
2005(MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Its planned three year mission was to survey natural and human driven changes in the cryosphere on Earth. It was designed to provide much more accurate data on the rate of change of the surface elevation of the polar ice sheets and sea ice thickness. The cryosphere is frozen water in the form of snow, permanently frozen ground (permafrost), floating ice, and glaciers. ...
An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km² (19,305 mile²). The only current ice sheets are Antarctic and Greenland; during the last ice age at Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) the Laurentide ice sheet covered much of Canada...
An icebreaker navigates through young (1 year) sea ice Sea ice is formed from ocean water that freezes. ...
CryoSat's primary instrument was SIRAL (SAR/Interferometric Radar Altimeter). SIRAL would operate in one of three modes, depending on where (above the Earth's surface) CryoSat was flying. Over the oceans and ice sheet interiors, CryoSat would have operated like a traditional radar altimeter. Over sea ice, coherently transmitted echoes would have been combined (synthetic aperture processing) to reduce the surface footprint so that CryoSat could map smaller ice floes. CryoSat's most advanced mode would have been used around the ice sheet margins and over mountain glaciers. Here, the altimeter would have performed synthetic aperture processing and used a second antenna as an interferometer to determine the across-track angle to the earliest radar return. This would have provided the exact surface location being measured when the surface is sloping. This long range radar antenna (approximately 40m (130ft) in diameter) rotates on a track to observe activities near the horizon. ...
An altimeter is an active instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. ...
The surface of Venus, as imaged by the Magellan probe using SAR Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar in which sophisticated post-processing of radar data is used to produce a very narrow effective beam. ...
For positioning purposes, CryoSat included a DORIS receiver, a Laser Retroreflector and 3 Star trackers. Laser (US Air Force) A LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is an optical source composed of a resonant optical cavity and a gain medium. ...
A retroreflector is a device that sends light or other radiation back where it came from regardless of the angle of incidence, unlike a mirror, which does that only if the mirror is exactly perpendicular to the light beam. ...
CryoSat was to have been operated from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is responsible for controlling ESA satellites and space probes. ...
It was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. The launch used a Rockot launcher - a modified SS-19 rocket, which was originally an ICBM designed to deliver nuclear weapons, but which Russia is now eliminating in accordance with the START treaties. According to Mr Yuri Bakhvalov, First Deputy Director General of the Khrunichev Space Centre, when the automatic command to switch off the second stage engine did not take effect, the second stage continued to operate until it ran out of fuel and as a consequence the planned separation of the third (Breeze-KM) stage of the rocket which carried the CryoSat satellite did not take place, and would thus have remained attached to the second stage. The upper rocket stages together with the satellite probably crashed in the Lincoln Sea. Plesetsk Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport, located about 800 km north of Moscow and south of Arkhangelsk (coordinates vary in different sources, but 62. ...
Rockot The Rockot is a Russian space launch vehicle. ...
The SS-19 (or Stiletto) is the NATO designation for a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile, now operated by Russia. ...
A Minuteman III missile soars after a test launch. ...
START II, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed by George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin in January 1993, which banned the use of MIRVs. ...
Lincoln Sea, is a body of water in the Arctic Ocean. ...
The ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites were precursors that tested the techniques used by CryoSat. European Remote-Sensing satellite (ERS) was the European Space Agencys first Earth-observing satellite. ...
European Remote-Sensing satellite (ERS) was the European Space Agencys first Earth-observing satellite. ...
See also
ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite), part of NASAs Earth Observing System, is a satellite mission for measuring ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics. ...
NASA Logo Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-09-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...
The optical spectrum (light or visible spectrum) is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. ...
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