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- The Russian Meteor-2 series of spacecraft are polar-orbiting weather satellites designed to provide continuous daily coverage of the Earth's surface and weather patterns. The Meteor-2 provides global data on the distribution of clouds, snow and ice, radiation fluxes, atmospheric temperature, humidity sounding data, cloud-top heights and sea-surface temperature. The series has been of particular importance in providing information to Russian ships on weather systems and sea-ice conditions. Typically, two Meteor satellites are in orbit at the same time to cover almost 80% of the Earth's surface in 6 hours. The Meteor-2 instrumentation consists of (1) three television-type visible and infrared scanners, (2) an 8-channel scanning radiometer, and (3) a radiation-flux device for measuring radiation flux densities in near-space. The two visible scanners operate in the 0.5-0.7 micrometer region and has a swath width of 2100 and 2400 km at a resolution of 2 and 1 km, respectively. These scanners provide images and mosaics of arctic and antarctic oceans. The IR scanner operates in the 8-12 micrometer range with a swath width of 2600 km at a resolution of 8 km. The IR scanner provides imagery of clouds and surface. The 8-channel infrared radiometer operates in the 11.1 to 18.7 micrometer range with a swath of 1000 km at 30 km resolution. This instrument provides atmospheric sounding data and total ozone content. Group: Platform_Details Entry_ID: METEOR-2 Group: Platform_Identification Platform_Category: Earth Observation Satellites Platform_Series_or_Entity: METEOR Short_Name: METEOR-2 End_Group Group: Synonymous_Platform_Names Short_Name: METEOR-2 End_Group Group: Orbit Orbit_Inclination: 81.30 deg Period: 102.70 min Perigee: 876 km Apogee: 893 km End_Group Creation_Date: 2007-10-11 Online_Resource: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/meteor2.htm Sample_Image: http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/m/meteor2.jpg Group: Platform_Logistics Design_Life: 1 YEAR Primary_Sponsor: Russia End_Group End_Group
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