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Latest Status Update - October 6, 2008
All six Formsat3-COSMIC satellites continue to operate. While previously reported problems persist (i.e. FM2 has only one working solar panel, and FM3 has a stuck solar array drive), no new problems have occurred and the mission is currently producing between 1500 - 2500 profiles per day. COSMIC FM2 recently went into phoenix mode (payloads turned off) for 35 days from 2008.212-246. The reasons for why the spacecraft shut itslef down and why it decided to come back are still under investigation by the NSPO operations team.
New results of tracking the L2C signal were presented jointly by JPL and UCAR at the ION conference in Savanna and the paper was selected as best paper in its session. The results for the first time demonstrate open loop L2 tracking and show that L2C data can benefit RO profiles in the troposphere.
The COSMIC team has supported several meetings including the Unidata Latin American Data users workshop, which inspired several new radio occultation data users from that region of the world http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/events/2008LatinAmericanDataWorkshop/.
The Formsat-3/COSMIC workshop was held Oct 1-3 in Taipei, Taiwan with strong participation by scientists from Europe, Japan, Brazil, the US and Taiwan. Impressive results from the use of COSMIC data in weather forecasting, hurricane/typhoon prediction, ionospheric research and climate studies were presented. The workshop was followed by productive discussions of a possible COSMIC follow-on mission.
Posted by Chris Rocken, Bill Schreiner, and the CDAAC Team.
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