After a 12-day journey over the Atlantic, the huge ship carrying ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite arrived safely yesterday at the Port of Cayenne in French Guiana.
We can now safely say that the Aeolus launch campaign has officially started and the whole team are looking forward to getting on with preparing it for liftoff, set for 21 August at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST) on a Vega rocket.
With liftoff less than three weeks away, ESA’s Aeolus satellite has been fuelled and is almost ready to be sealed within its Vega rocket fairing.
This pioneering mission is set to provide global wind-profile data, using powerful laser technology that probes the lowermost 30 km of our atmosphere to yield vertical profiles of the wind and information on aerosols and clouds.The mission will improve our understanding of how atmosphere dynamics work and contribute to climate change research. At the same time, it will also help to predict extreme events such as hurricanes and help us to better understand and model large-scale wind patterns driving weather such as El Niño.It is also expected to bring considerable benefits to society by improving weather forecasts. Its global wind measurements, delivered almost in real time, are exactly what meteorological centres are looking for to improve their forecasts.