The ADvanced Earth Observing Satellite 2 (ADEOS-2) Mission is a joint international cooperative program like its successor, ADEOS-1. With a three-year operational life, the mission will support the monitoring of global environmental changes while continuing and furthering the broad-ranging observation technology created by ADEOS-1.

The three scientific goals are:

To regularly monitor the water and energy cycle as a part of the global climate system.
To quantitatively estimate the biomass and fundamental productivity as part of the carbon cycle, which plays an important role for global warming.
To detect the signal of long term climate change as a result of continuous observations succeeded from ADEOS-1.

Mission Instrumentation:

ADEOS-2 has the following instrumentation onboard:

Advanced microwave scanning radiometer
Global imager
Improved limb atmospheric spectrometer
Seawinds
Polarization and directionality of earth reflectance
Retroreflector array

Mission Parameters:

ADEOS-2 Mission Parameters
Sponsor:	(JAXA) Japan
Expected Life:	3 years
Primary Applications:	environmental monitoring
Primary SLR Applications:	precision orbit determination
COSPAR ID:	0205601
SIC Code:	1556
NORAD SSC Code:	27597
Launch Date:	14 December 2002
NP Bin Size:	15 seconds
RRA Diameter:	16 cm
RRA Shape:	hemispherical
Reflectors:	9 corner cubes
Orbit:	circular, sun-synchronous sub-recurrent
Inclination:	98.6 degrees
Eccentricity:	0.001
Perigee:	803 km
Period:	101 minutes
Weight:	1200 kg

Additional Information:

Web sites:

JAXA
Earth Observing Research Center (EORC)

Publications:

Sawabe, M., and Kashimoto, M., "ADEOS-II precise orbit determinations with GPS and SLR", ADV SPACE RES 23: (4) 763-766 1999.