The new Fengyun-3E meteorological satellite (FY-3E) was successfully launched on July 4 (UTC) at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province, China. The satellite is the first early morning orbit meteorological satellite for civil use in the world.
Operated by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the National Satellite Meteorological Center, FY-3E will join the Chinese FY-3C and FY-3D satellites to realize coverage of early morning, morning and afternoon orbits.
Together they will provide global data coverage for numerical weather prediction (NWP) at six-hour intervals, and effectively ramp up global NWP accuracy and time efficiency, bearing vital significance to improving the global Earth observing system.
The overall Fengyun 3 series of weather satellites carry a host of instruments, including a visible and infrared radiometer, an infrared atmospheric sounder, a microwave temperature sounder, a microwave humidity sounder, a medium resolution spectral imager, a solar backscattering UV sounder, a total ozone unit, a microwave radiation imager, an atmospheric sounding interferometer, an Earth radiation measurement, a space environment monitor, and a solar irradiation monitor.
It is expected that FY-3E will help improve disaster preparedness. The satellite can realize the monitoring of a wide range of factors, such as 3D atmosphere, ocean surface wind fields, glimmer at night, the Sun, and the ionosphere. It will enhance monitoring and analysis capacity of weather and climate, atmospheric environment, and space weather.
To date, CMA has launched 19 Fengyun meteorological satellites, with nine of them in orbit, forming a well-developed networking observation of polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites.
CMA will now undertake significant in-orbit testing procedures on the FY-3E satellite.