KOMPSAT-5 GNSS Radio Occultation Data Operations

Abstract

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute launched KOMPSAT-5 on August 22, 2013, and has been operating for 10 years. KOMPSAT-5 has SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) for earth observation missions, and collects data necessary for earth atmosphere analysis through GNSS RO (Radio Occultation) receivers. RO data can be used for numerical weather forecast model based on temperature, pressure, and humidity by calculating the vertical distribution of atmospheric information. As a part of the Korea-US science and technology cooperation, KARI has been providing RO data of KOMPSAT-5 to the United States NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in near-real time since 2018. To this end, KARI receives telemetry data from the satellite about 12 times a day using 3 ground stations from Daejeon, Alaska in the U.S., and Sodankyla in Finland. The pre-processed data is being provided to both the UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) in the U.S. and the KASI (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute). In this paper, radio occlusion data of KOMPSAT-5 is introduced, and system configuration, operation concepts for providing near-real time data and its application are also presented.