Himawari 8 satellite

Himawari-8

Japan

Spacecraft nº:

Japanese spacecraft nº: 201

Prime manufacturer	Mitsubishi Electric (prime), Boeing
Platform	DS-2000 bus
Operator	Japanese Ministry of Transport Civil Aviation Bureau & Meteorological Agency
Mass at launch	~3500 kg
Dry Mass	1300 kg
Basic shape
Dimension (m)
Equipment	AHI, SEDA, DCS
Solar array	Deployable solar array
Stabilization
Propulsion
DC power
Design lifetime	15 years (meteorological mission 8 years)

Date	Position	Remarks
Dec 2014	140.8° E

HIMAWARI 8 is a Japanese weather satellite, the 8th of the Himawari geostationary weather satellite operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The spacecraft was constructed by Mitsubishi Electric, and is the first of two similar satellites to be based on the DS-2000 bus.
These satellites are to replace MTSat-1R (Himawari-6) and MTSAT-2 (Himawari-7). The two satellites are designed to remain in service for 15 years or more.
Main instrument of the satellites is AHI (Advanced Himawari Imager). It is comparable to the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on board of the U.S. GOES-R class satellites. AHI is a multi-purpose imager for weather watch, NWP utilization and environment monitoring; and wind derivation by tracking clouds and water vapor features. It features 16 channels operating in the VIS, NIR, SWIR, MWIR and TIR spectral bands (~0.43 - ~13.4 µm). It has a spatial resolution of 0.5 km to 2 km, depending on spectral band. The coverage cycle is 10 minutes for full disk.
Also on board is SEDA (Space Environment Data Acquisition Monitor) to measure the radiation to which the satellites are exposed in their geostationary Earth orbits. It measures protons in the 15 MeV to 100 MeV range and electrons in 0.2 MeV to ~5 MeV range.
The DCS (Data Collection Subsystem) supports the collection of surface-based observation data obtained by ground segments similar as in the earlier MTSAT series. DCS relays data from the ground through a UHF transponder, which emits a Ka-band signal.

A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket placed the Japan Meteorological Agency's Himawari-8 weather satellite in geostationary transfer orbit Oct 7, 2014. On Oct 15 the satellite was in a 35756 x 35813 km x 0.1 deg orbit over 140.8E.

Ref.: #7(JR703,706), #14, #207, #228 - update: 15.01.15