AATSR ACQUISITIONS

The AATSR (Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer) instrument is an imaging radiometer primarily designed to measure global Sea Surface Temperature (SST) to the high levels of accuracy and stability required for climate research and modelling. Like its predecessors, ATSR 1 & 2 it will also produce high quality visible and thermal images.

AATSR is the third in the ATSR series, and is to be a payload instrument on ESA's ENVISAT-1 polar-orbiting mission (due for launch in 2000). It is primarily funded by the UK Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) with contributions from the Natural Environment Research Council and from Australia. On behalf of the DETR, the Principal Investigator is Professor David Llewellyn-Jones of the University of Leicester.

AATSR has the same signal channels and embodies exactly the same viewing principle as ATSR-2. These are: thermal channels at 3.7, 10.8, and 12 microns wavelength; and reflected visible/near infrared channels at 0.555, 0.659, 0.865, and 1.61 microns wavelength.
The main objective of AATSR is to contribute to the long-term climate record of global Sea Surface Temperature by extending the current ATSR-1 and -2 global data-sets well into the next decade. This could eventually provide the climate research community with uniformly high quality global SST data over a period of 12-15 years (depending on the lifetime of AATSR).

Like its predecessors, ATSR-1 and ATSR-2, it will carry on-board calibration systems for the thermal channels, using two black bodies, viewed every scan, and for the visible channels a sample of solar radiation scattered from a diffuser plate is viewed once per orbit. Unlike ATSR-2 it maintains full digitisation of all channels all the time and has no limited-data-rate operating modes.

The AATSR instrument, in contrast to its predecessors (funded by SERC/NERC), is primarily funded by the DETR's Global Atmosphere Division, in order to complete a data-set of accurate global SST, lasting over ten years, which will contribute to The Climate Record and help provide quantitative assessments of possible climate change. The DETR is funding AATSR as a potential operational user of the data - the first environment ministry in Europe to take such a step - as part of a UK Government drive to direct the development and deployment of Earth Observation satellite missions more specifically towards the requirements of end-users of the data.

The ATSR (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) instruments produce infrared images of the Earth at a spatial resolution of one kilometre. The data from these instruments is useful for scientific studies of the land surface, atmosphere, clouds, oceans, and the cryosphere.
The first ATSR instrument, ATSR-1, was launched on board the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1) in July 1991, as part of their Earth Observation Programme.

An enhanced version of ATSR, ATSR-2, was successfully launched on board ESA's ERS-2 spacecraft on 21st April 1995. ATSR-2 is equipped with additional visible channels for vegetation monitoring.
The AATSR (Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer) instrument has been successfully launched on board the ENVISAT spacecraft on 1st March 2002 at 01:07 GMT from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

AATSR programmed acquisitions:

Table 2.6. AATSR acquisitions programmed (in blue) during the Mission 1 of the SEN2FLEX campaign. 

Table 2.7. AATSR acquisition programmed (in blue) during the Mission 2 of the SEN2FLEX campaign.