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Space Science

Monster European Environmental Satellite 252

Posted by michael from the ozone-hole-what-ozone-hole dept.
andygood writes: "Spaceflight Now has this article about the 'Mother of All Earth Observation Satellites' which will be launched by Europe in early 2002. This thing is the size of a juggernaut and 'every hour will gather as much data as can be stored on a dozen PC hard disks'. 'ENVISAT' (ENVIronmental SATellite) has been in the works for almost fourteen years with a price tag of 2.3 billion (Euro)."
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Monster European Environmental Satellite More

Monster European Environmental Satellite

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  • I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by s390 ( 33540 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @10:41PM (#2561424) Homepage
    how much data the European Space Agency thinks can be stored on a "PC Hard Disk" nowadays... 1 GB, 10 GB, 100 GB? They're a little short on meaningful statistics. But it's a press release - the only time the press does math is when one of them gets stuck with the bar tab and figures out a tip.

    It would also be interesting to hear what storage technology they're using. Surely they're not flying a Terabyte RAID5 array (what with launch vibration, etc.). More likely dense and hardened DRAM (and lots of it), I'd guess. It almost makes me want to go read the article to find this out.
    • I think solar radiation would be even more of a concern than launch vibration. Like the other poster said, it'll probably be broadcast and recorded by terrestrial scientists.

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What the hell is "the size of
      a juggernaut" I didn't think that a juggernaut had any meaning related to size, more a matter of relentlessness.

      juggernaut (jgr-nôt)
      n.
      Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed.
      An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path: "It doesn't assume that people need necessarily remain passive when confronted by what appears to be the juggernaut of history" (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt). Juggernaut Used as a title for the Hindu deity Krishna.
      • I didn't think that a juggernaut had any meaning related to size

        Juggernaut is also used to describe really big trucks ... The original Jagannath, was a large idol of Krshna which was schleppt around Puri in on a big cart, big enough at least for devotees to be able to throw themselves under its wheels. Hence the 'blind devotion' meaning.

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @12:23AM (#2561659)
      says here [esa.int] that:

      "The on-board recording system is composed of two solid state recorders (SSR) with 70 Gbits capacity each, and one tape recorder (TR), 30 Gbits capacity as back up for low rate data recording."

      It's about halfway down the page.
    • how much data the European Space Agency thinks can be stored on a "PC Hard Disk" nowadays...

      Just be glad they didn't say:

      "Enough data to fill the Encyclopedia Brittanica 100 times over"

      "If the data were printed out on A4 paper the stack would be higher than Everest - every hour!"

      or other eighties versions of 'shitloads of data'
  • Sounds like a little too much hype. The article and write up say the thing collects enough info every hour to fill a dozen hard drives. But what size hard drives? The project started in 1988, so are we using 1988 hard drives? That should be about 50MB each, so a dozen totals a whopping 600MB of data. Wow.

  • Hmm (Score:1, Redundant)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 )
    Y'know, if we got all these satellite guys together, the ones in the previous story could have helped the EU save a few billion by using parts from Radio Shack...
  • Scary, yet extremely neat.

  • Damn, that's cheap! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pyromage ( 19360 )
    Now, I don't know the dollars->euro exchange rate, but whatever it is, that is still amazingly cheap for a satalite of that caliber. Contrast with hubble: the cost of that was in the trillions; an order of magnitude higher.

    Why can't NASA accomplish anything like this?

    • Cost of the HST (Score:3, Informative)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 )

      (HST), the first large orbital optical observatory. Built from 1978 to 1990 at a cost of $1.5 billion

      HST Programs & STS-82 Costs
      Servicing Mission Costs - HST
      NICMOS 105
      STIS 125
      GS 8
      Other Flight Hardware 35
      Simulators/Testing 46
      Ops/Software Development 28

      Total 347 Million

      Servicing Mission Costs - Shuttle
      Nominal Shuttle Flight Costs
      448 Million

      All the above are in USD

      Source - http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/service/gallery/fact _sheets/spacesci/hst-cost.htm
    • According to www.xe.com [xe.com] 2.3 billion Euros is equal to about 2.02 billion US dollars.

    • You're probably confused. In most of Europe the quantity 'billion' or whatever it may be in some other language (biljoen in Dutch) is 10e12. In the USA a billion is 10e9. Similary, a trilion is 10e15 in Europe and 10e12 in the USA.

      10e9 is 'miljard' in Dutch (and sounds similar in most European languages, AFAIK).

      • No. That was the case 30 years ago- but the american usage has been universally adopted since then, atleast in all papers, government announcements and everyday usage; and the dictionaries indicate that also.

        In UK, europe:

        1 billion = 1e9
        1 trillion = 1e12

        Europe wouldn't make a satellite that cost 2e12 dollars!

        • Re:Damn, that's cheap! (Score:2, Informative)

          by WoOS ( 28173 )

          No. That was the case 30 years ago- but the american usage has been universally adopted since then, atleast in all papers, government announcements and everyday usage; and the dictionaries indicate that also.

          It's somewhat OT, but the american use of billion has not been adopted universially. Maybe in the english speaking countries but at least in Germany it's still the good old: Million (10e6) - Milliarde (10e9) - Billion (10e12) - Billiarde (10e15) - Trillion (10e18) - ... . This way you get much more bang for your -uhm- billion ;-)
          I guess that's what Erik meant.

    • Because NASA isn't the business of launching satellites, it's in the business of writing huge reports about how to launch satellites.
  • So it turns out I am not an Environmental Engineer. This article just tells me that ESA is building a gigantic satellite, at a cost of 2.3 billion Euro. Then it lists some benefits:

    we want to retain an overview, for example, of ocean water quality, of greenhouse gases or temperature distribution in the atmosphere, and to be able to establish the extent to which tropical forests are being cut down
    I see statistics about this every day in the newspaper. Clearly, we can measure all these things from the ground - what does a satellite give us? Is it just there for the global view?

    SCIAMACHY shows the consequences of forest fires, industrial emissions, arctic haze, dust storms and volcanic eruptions.
    Whatever gases get released into the atmosphere, stay in the atmosphere. Big news.

    Once their presence is identified from space, poisonous algae can be prevented from spreading
    Help me understand why anyone cares enough about poisonous algae to send a satellite into space.

    So in order to get some answers, I went to the satellite's web page [esa.int] and found myself overwhelmed by the amount of incomprehensible information. The page is basically a sales portal for scientists who want to buy the data, but doesn't give any information comprehensible to a little layman like me.

    So, does anyone have a good source that will explain to me why I should care one snippet about this satellite, and not think that ESA just blew E2.3 billion on the world's biggest piece of space debris?

    • I'm still trying to decipher the doublespeak on the web page myself. In general the first question that comes to mind;

      If the citizens of Europe paid for this thing with their tax dollars then tell me again why they are paying for the data it gathers? Seems like they already own it to me.

      Is it going to have some downlinks in a format the a research institute without a 2M (euro or dollar) groundstation can copy directly from the bird?

      I'm just an amateur, but I've copied downlinks from the NOAA polar orbiters and talked to astronauts on the ISS with gear I put together out of spare parts in my office/shack/rats nest. Downloading data from an FTP server (even if it's free) just doesn't instill that sense of wonder that will excite the kids and create the next generation of scientists.
      • Is it going to have some downlinks in a format the a research institute without a 2M (euro or dollar) groundstation can copy directly from the bird?
        Yes, if you can cope with the amount of data, it is possible. If I'm right, there will be also be a subset of the data in BUFFR format.

      • Re:Umm, okay. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Most of the users will get the data for free, that's how ESA work. Comercial users pay for it (and cheap it ain't). And as to how much data it creates, well, I work at a distribution centre for Envisat; we only supply 1/3 of the data and 320 terabytes of online storage gives us 9 months worth of data. Users can order the data they want in the format they want (CR, tape, FTP). You could download directly from the bird, but you'd need some impressive kit (which we have), the bandwidth is HUGE.

    • Re:Umm, okay. (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by iso ( 87585 )
      I've noticed that responses like this one have become very popular on slashdot recently. I can't think of a single word or soundbite to describe it, but it's something along the lines of "I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject at hand yet I feel qualified enough to state that it is of no value to anyone."

      We simply must come up with a catchy phrase to describe this kind of response. "Ignoramus" and "slashbot" are both too vague, and while "Troll" is probably the closest term, it doesn't capture the nuances of this common response. Any takers?

      - j
      • "Sophomoric" is the word you're looking for, but most moderators would think it referred to high school. From the OED: sophomoric: Of or pertaining to, befitting or resembling, characteristic of, a sophomore; hence, pretentious, bombastic, inflated in style or manner; immature, crude, superficial. "Pretentious" and "pedantic" would be good, too.
        • I don't think "pretentious" and "pedantic" are a good fit as while they're close, they don't specifically relate to the assumption that one knows everything. "Sophomoric" on the other hand is perfect. I completely forgot about that word! The OED definition is good, but Merriam-Webster's really shows how it relates to many recent slashdot posts:

          sophomoric, adj, 1 : conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature ...

          I vote for a new moderation category: (-1, Sophomoric).

          - j
    • From looking at the insturments descriptions from the satellite's web page [esa.int] there seem to be two or three groups of intsturments.

      1. Spectrometers - These are good for checking atmospheric content and content of the surface below. This is useful to see how much ozone is where, or if there is a lot of chemical x in the ocean, ground, or atmosphere. There is also a radar there to measure the water vapor in the atmosphere. This is useful to metorologists.

      2. Mapping - The SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) can make 3-d topographic maps of the earth.

      3. Support - There is a laser altimeter and Radio Alitmeter used for ranging to further enhance the measurements from the first two categories.

    • Re:Umm, okay. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 )
      we want to retain an overview, for example, of ocean water quality, of greenhouse gases or temperature distribution in the atmosphere, and to be able to establish the extent to which tropical forests are being cut down

      I see statistics about this every day in the newspaper. Clearly, we can measure all these things from the ground - what does a satellite give us? Is it just there for the global view?

      Actually, most of these things are already gathered from satellites in one form or another. This satellite gives more extensive, detailed data that many of the others that are already in existence. Nothing extremely groundbreaking but serious improvements in a number of areas.

      Whatever gases get released into the atmosphere, stay in the atmosphere. Big news.

      Actually, no, this is just plain wrong. Gases and materials are continually being added and removed from our atmosphere. Oxygen is removed by animal life and combustion. Carbon Dioxide is removed by plant life and the oceans, as well as various geological processes. Various emissions created by industrial processes are removed by rain (I.E, acid rain). CFC's work their way up into the upper atmosphere over time and destroy Ozone. Our understanding of all of these processes is incomplete. So we need more detailed data. This satellite gathers that data.

      Once their presence is identified from space, poisonous algae can be prevented from spreading

      Help me understand why anyone cares enough about poisonous algae to send a satellite into space.

      Hmmm. Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would care about huge masses of poisonous algae. It kills of fish, it kills off other aquatic life. It affects fishing, which for many people is an extremely important source of food. It effects the chemical composition the ocean, and in turn how the ocean interacts with the atmosphere.

      So in order to get some answers, I went to the satellite's web page [esa.int] and found myself overwhelmed by the amount of incomprehensible information. The page is basically a sales portal for scientists who want to buy the data, but doesn't give any information comprehensible to a little layman like me.

      Incomprehensible? To you maybe. If you really want to know go do a little research on google for some of the topics mentioned in the article. Yes, the site you linked to is in fact designed for scientists. Why should everything be spoon fed to your level of ignorance? If you want to know, go educate yourself.

      So, does anyone have a good source that will explain to me why I should care one snippet about this satellite, and not think that ESA just blew E2.3 billion on the world's biggest piece of space debris?

      Yes, now that you mention it Micheal kindly provided a link to it at the top of the page. This satellite is exceptional only in it's size. If you can't logically reason out why those sorts of data might be useful, well google is your friend.
    • I see statistics about this every day in the newspaper. Clearly, we can measure all these things from the ground - what does a satellite give us? Is it just there for the global view?

      JUST global view ? Think about the huge advantage this gives compared to ground-based measurements. How many stations exist in the (ant-)arctic regions or on the oceans or in Africa ?
    • Help me understand why anyone cares enough about poisonous algae to send a satellite into space.

      I live a few miles from the ocean. The last red tide we had was fairly severe. People would drive to the beach communities and start coughing and hacking as soon as they got out of their cars. A few friends went surfing before anyone knew it was a red tide, and had severe symptoms, including bleeding eyes and sinuses.

      With a birds eye view, it is possible not only to get early warning of these events, but to figure out what causes them - are they linked to temperature, sediment loads, particular nutrients, or what?? Anyone like seafood?? Knowing more about the where and when of algae will improve the safety and quality of fish in your local market.
  • As someone else pointed out, this is a pretty touchy-feely press release, and it makes this Juggernaut of a satellite sound like one of Brautigan's "machines of loving grace [redhousebooks.com]." Everyone should be happy except for the "bad" algae, eh?

    The hyperbole surrounding its data gathering rate (a dozen PC hard disks per day? Whoa! Any particular PC?) seems to lay groundwork for justifying not releasing received data until it has been 'reduced' to datasets fit for public consumption, and flawed or unexpected data has been filtered out. I'd assume pretty rapid turnaround of at least some of the data, though, if they're going to be predicting avalanches and mudslides worldwide.

    Is my paranoia showing? Would you tell me if it were?
  • Let's see... a dozen "hard disks" of data per hour might be 100-150 GB of data on an extremely conservative estimate.

    This is a LOT of data. More data than (I would think at least) would be useful for environmental monitoring. Especially taking bandwidth into consideration for transmitting all or some of this data back to earth.

    I'm sure the designers have scientific uses in mind, but I'm wondering how powerful the spy capabilities of this beast would be... imagine how closely, for example, you could look on a 150 GB jpeg of the earth. (I know this figure doesn't apply to the jpeg images, but it's still the same order of magnitude of data resolution). And it supposedly takes 3 days of such data collection to make a map of the earth, so it's like an 11 terabyte map of the earth. I also wonder who is getting access to the information collected by it!

    -3Suns

    ~~~~
    The Revolution will be Slashdotted.
    • Are you saying that watching tanks and license plates for intelligence purposes is more complex and data-intensive than (say) analyzing hurricanes and ocean current flow? We indeed have a long tradition of lofting satellites for military and intelligence purposes. But in the satellite game, I can think of more cases of scientists justifying their interesting legit experiments by making them sound like they have military applications, than I can of intelligence satellites masquerading as scientific platforms. (I recall a particularly nice astrophysics platform in the 70's that was justified as a way to detect nuclear explosions on the back of the moon. It was total bullshit: Nobody really cared about nuclear explosions on the back of the moon, except as a funding mechanism for pure physics. It provided some great gamma ray data.)

      We love conspiracy theories, but I'm not especially concerned about a pan-European military-industrial complex that may be lofting secret spy satellites. Besides, they can already do that without pretending, in this day of 'global reach terrorism.'
      • Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is being secretly developed as a spy satellite. I also understand the necessity of fine precision in spaceborne environmental study.

        All I'm saying is that at some t in the future we might have to take a look at the powers that be during t and wonder if they are using the "largest and most advanced Earth observation satellite ever built" to spy on people.

        I also might have misread the article, I still can't tell. Does
        Early in 2002 an Ariane 5 rocket will launch the largest and most advanced Earth observation satellite ever built in Europe from the European Spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana.

        mean it's the most advanced one ever or just of those built in Europe?

        Presumably if there are larger and more advanced ones launched by America/others, it would make more sense to worry about those, unless Europe turns into a police state.

        -3Suns

        ~~~~
        The Revolution will be Slashdotted
        • We know how governments love to spy anything, include the internet we're using.
          Please don't forget this SAT was endorsed by European governments ;)

          • We know how governments love to spy anything, include the internet we're using.
            Please don't forget this SAT was endorsed by European governments ;)


            Which doesn't spent a dime on spying.
            Why should they.
            The biggest difference between the US and the EC is that we don't waste as much money on the military as the US.
            Healthcare, education and work are more important than wasting money on military crap.
    • but if its real purpose is spying, would they really let on about its true bandwidth capabilities? Methinks not.
      • And of course if they lie, simply while the true flourishes they would be in threat.

        (reporter) Q: Why the real data storage capability of ENVISAT has been hindered?

        (minister) A: Some transcriptions of measuring calculations hadn't correct.

        Q: Who's the responsible or responsibles by this error?

        A: We believe that the miscorrect information came from a typo, combined with additional errors doing the calculations, and thus, the mistaken result.

    • Re:Spy capabilities (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      First, JPEG is lossy - not good for scientific purposes.

      Also, 150GB isn't all that much for environmental data of the entire globe, probably down to the square mile. The Earth has ~200 million square miles of surface area. That leaves about 750KB of data per square mile. Let's round this up to a Megabyte.

      Monitoring environmental data also isn't just about taking pictures of cloud conditions. There are several types of imagery that they might record: weather patterns, air temperature, sea temperature, ozone levels, etc.

      If you can fit a square mile of this kind of information into a megabyte, I'd be very, very impressed. Oh, wait - make that 750K.

    • Data rates (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Caid Raspa ( 304283 )
      This is a LOT of data. More data than (I would think at least) would be useful for environmental monitoring. Especially taking bandwidth into consideration for transmitting all or some of this data back to earth.

      I assume this data rate is decoded, not the raw telemetry, which is quite useless. Lets see.

      The 'housekeeping data' of a satellite contains thousands of satellite parameters, e.g. orbital position, currents, voltages, radiation level, temperatures, what is on/off, status of each instrument. On many scientific satellites, all this affects the performance of all instruments. Often the HK data is recorded once per a few seconds.

      This is because when voltage across some critical part is raising, you have to shut the satellite down. Then, from the last set of HK data, you have to fig out what is wrong, and correct or shut down the dangerous part, and still have a 90% functional satellite.

      Lets assume you have of the order 10000 parameters to monitor, and the values are recorded 15 times/minute. Assume each values takes five bytes when decoded (including a STRING for parameter name. The raw telemetry will of course be more compact). This gives 10000x15x60x24x5 bytes/day, or about 1 GB/day, just to know the satellite is OK.

      Now, add the HK, calibration and science data for each instrument. I have analyzed some data from satellite X-ray instruments, so I use it as a crude estimate. (This is very crude, other instruments may be completely different) A modern X-ray instrument produces about 1GB/hour in decoded data (instrumental HK, calibration, science). Thus,we have about 20 GB/day/instrument. I haven't bothered to read the article, but I assume the satellite contains about half a dozen instruments.

      This would produce about 100 GB/day. Problem solved.

      • Interesting info Caid. I had underestimated how much storage it takes to run a scientific satellite.

        However, the data rate for the satellite is "a dozen computer hard drives" per hour, which I estimated at 100-150 GB/hour, conservatively. That's 1.2-1.8 terabytes per day. 100 GB/day housekeeping/calibration is chump change, esp. considering you could throw some of it out as soon as you decide that nothing is wrong.

        NASA has lots of satellite images on the web [nasa.gov] that are helpful in getting an idea of image size. Unfortunately many of the images themselves are offline due to server renovations until Nov. 27, but there's this one. [nasa.gov] This is a 13 MB lossless TIFF image of Los Angeles. Pretty poor resolution for spy satellite purposes. But let's say that we can double the resolution and quadruple the file size. This means we could double the resolution four times and the resulting image would be less than a gigabyte. The data capture rate for this satellite would allow for ~100 high-resolution land shots per hour, even factoring in the whole instrumentation/HK dealie.

        Like I said before, I know this isn't a spy satellite. If it were, though, it'd make a damn good one!

  • SCIAMACHY (Score:1, Troll)

    by dackroyd ( 468778 )
    The Germans are particularly proud of SCIAMACHY on board Envisat: the SCanning and Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY.

    Only the Germans would come up with an acronym of nine letters. And it looks liks they'll be the only people able to pronounce it ;)

    Ski-A-Marquis ?

  • Will all the information that this is collecting be available to the public through a website? I'm sure many Universities and public schools would love to have this information and I am sure a lot of the general public would be interested as well.

  • Likely Outcome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @11:17PM (#2561530)
    Satellite: Transmits data showing clear signs of changes in earth's environment


    Scientists: Analyze data


    Special Interest Lobbyists: Point out that at least one scientist somewhere thinks that the changes may not be due to human activity


    Politicians: Heeding lobbyists, maintain status quo


    Net Results: Nothing

    • I don't know, a big observations satellite, puming gigs of data every hour down to its base stations, with the ability to monitor slight movements, sounds slightly suspect to me. Not just observing the environment me thinks.

      They know where you live there is no escape evryone in Europe give a wave up at the sky, your masters are watching you.

    • s/politicians/US politicians/g

      Thank you.

    • Since, every time this is mentioned, independent thinkers here a slashdot crow about how foolish the concept of global warming is, here are some posts of mine from kuro5hin awhile ago on the same topic, with several pertient links to actual, real, evidence for the matter at hand. Enjoy, sand-heads:

      --

      Stating that long-term climate change can't be known from short-term calculations is dosen't prove or disprove anything. If you are going to try and disprove climate change, look at all the evidence that's been collected first, and look at the theoretical side of the argument. I'll give a short summery of what I know of each now; I'll try and get some links to back myself up by tonight and post them as a reply to this.

      Areas of Evidence for climate change:
      The general areas of evidence for climate change, as I know them, are
      • Ground-based temperature measurment
      • Balloon-based temperature measurment
      • Sattelite-based temperature measurment
      • Permaice-based atmospheric chemical content measurment

      It's the last one, measurment of atmosphereic chemical content through drill-cores of permanent ice (in areas having very long term ice formations - Greenland, the Antarctic region, and so forth) which you have failed to mention, and which give some of the most compelling evidence yet - due to the informaiton's long-term charecteristics - of global climate change. What is derived from such measurments (as I said, I'll post some links tonight) is that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is now - i.e. in the last 100 or so years - increasing at a rate not seen since the last major global temperature change. What gives this evidence it's added weight is both the fact that it isn't limited to the last 100, 50, or 20 years; rather, the body of informaiton extends over thousands, tens of thousand, or more years. The other methods of measurment, too, give some proof of short-term temerpature change; further, their body of evidence, though short-term, does demonstrate three things which are not of negligable importance. First, that the temperatures measured are fluctuating, though in which direction I (under the assumption that what you have written is mostly truthful) cannot say. Second, that there that these fluctuations are occuring on a global scale. Their global scale, and their simple fluctuation - with the best sensors we have - demonstrate that there is someting happening, though exactly what cannot be known from that. Thirdly, the changes occuring are demonstrating a pattern to their change, and have been for as long as measurments have been taken. These last ten years, keep in mind, have been the warmest past ten years on record (or so I've been told more than once, though I will - as I said - get some links to back this up); further, each of these past ten years has been warmer than the previous year.

      The theory of global warming

      Despite the number and the justification of the questions concerning the current consensus on global warming, these arguments given have rested on questioning the evidence of the warming. What hasn't yet been addressed is the theory behind global warming. Just as CFCs were considered to be dangerous because of a theory which saw them as such, there is a method to the (to some, apparent) madness of the people who see warming as a threat. That is that C02 is a greehouse gas - i.e. the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is corelated to the amount of solar radiation kept within the atmosphere of a given planet. Given this, and given that there is ample evidence that humans have been releasing - through the conversion of petrochemicals into mechanical energy - the dormant CO2 from the earth's crust into the earth's atmosphere - leads to the contention that humans are having some effect on the environment through the activites of our civilization. The only thing left to question, so long as the theory of CO2 being a greehouse gas and the contention that humans have been releasing it into the earth's atmosphere are not disproven by some unaccounted for or unmeasured piece of evidence, is the scale of the change. Given what I stated above (i.e. that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been seen to be increasing at it's greatest level, year over year, in an extremely long time, leads one to conclude that there is a significant possibility that humans have, or will have, some direct influence on the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere and surface. Given that a large proportion of the accessable petrochemicals have already been used, and thus that a significant proprtion of the dormant CO2 in the earth has been released into the atmosphere, I would then put forth that there is at least some cause for concern around this issue. Given, further, that there are methods by which we can now reduce, if we so desired as a population, our CO2 output, I see no compelling reason why we should not do that.

      ----
      Links to sources w/ comment: http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/3/2/03449/27 856/131#131 [kuro5hin.org]; more comment here [kuro5hin.org]
  • It can see which newspaper you're reading when you are sitting on the toilet. It can examine the contents of your hard drive from miles out in space, and re-arrange your files so you can't find anything. Oh yeah, and it can shoot down nuclear warheads and probably play a mean game of CS.

    I've never heard of so many diverse sensors placed in the same package, it seems somewhat ridiculous at first glance. I'm sure there is a scientific reason for it, but launching that big boy isn't going to be easy I'm sure.
    • My understanding is that you put so many sensors on the same satellite so that you can acquire data from multiple instruments at the same time. Then you can combine the data to extract interesting information that you couldn't get from a single instrument.

      Of course, there are power and storage limitations, so you can't have all the sensors on all the time.
  • With a thing of this size, it should be visible by the naked eye, right? I really like astronomy, but I've never gotton too much into it. Could I spot this thing with binoculars if that thing makes it into space?
    • With a thing of this size, it should be visible by the naked eye, right?

      Errr, probably not (though that'd be cool).

      From the second paragraph of the article - "...the size of an articulated lorry..."

      For those non-Brits out there (like myself), a quick Google [google.com] search [google.com] explains that this sucker is the size of your standard highway-going semi. Big? Yeah. Naked-eye visible? Probably not, and CERTAINLY not in bright daylight.

      Could I spot this thing with binoculars if that thing makes it into space?

      I dunno - try it and tell me if it works. ;-)
  • ...what do they plan to do with this data? Where are they going to store it all at, it also seems to me that this is way to much data for scientists to process in detail in any resonable amount of time.
    • I think most of the date will in fact just be stored in some archive in case it might be usefull later or analysed with better software etc.

      Say an earthquake happens or a vulcan errupts somewhere. Scientists will then dig the archive for older data of that region to see if and what has happend before that event and if that can be used to make predictions of the behaviour of other vulcans/geological instable regions.

  • What's the euro these days? (Score:3, Funny)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Tuesday November 13, 2001 @11:59PM (#2561611) Homepage
    ENVISAT' (ENVIronmental SATellite) has been in the works for almost fourteen years with a price tag of 2.3 billion (Euro).

    Are Euro at the same exchange rate as Canadian money? If so thats like three fiddy these days. What a bargain!

  • This [esa.int] is the link to the ENVISAT website
  • the size of a juggernaut

    Is that an African or a European juggernaut?

    How big is a juggernaut anyways? Is it bigger or smaller then a cosmonaut? How about an astronaut?
    • the size of a juggernaut

      Uh, maybe you mean "the size of a dreadnaught". A juggernaut is a force, not a unit of size. A dreadnaut is a type of battleship, a thing that is very large indeed. I don't normally get into dictionary nitpicking, but this isn't a misspelling...it's a completely wrong word.

      juggernaut (jgr-nôt)
      n.
      Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed.

      An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path: "It doesn't assume that people need necessarily remain passive when confronted by what appears to be the juggernaut of history" (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt).

      Juggernaut Used as a title for the Hindu deity Krishna.

      dreadnought (drdnôt)
      n. A battleship armed with six or more guns having calibers of 12 inches or more.

  • Godzilla (Score:3, Funny)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @01:04AM (#2561728) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps the Monster Satellite should keep watch over Japan, since that's where Godzilla attacks most. I haven't heard of European monsters; none visible from space anyway.
  • Isn't it a bit risky to put all their eggs in one basket? What happens when a micrometeorite punctures a few instruments and renders an important part useless and the satellite nonfunctional? Scary thought. KingPrad
    • Forget space junk ... ENVISAT is being launched on an Ariane 5 rocket (one of the only rockets large enough to carry this beast of a satellite), and the last Ariane 5 launch had problems with its last stage. Of the two satellites it carried, one ended up a writeoff, and the other (another ESA satellite, meant to relay data from ENVISAT, called Artemis - here's a report of the recovery operation [esa.int]) will have to use most of its fuel just to reach the proper orbit, greatly reducing its operational life.

      They've been investigating the problem since July, and that's the reason ENVISAT's launch has been delayed until 2002. It's all very scary, having so much riding on that one launch.
    • You're right about the risks, But putting different instruments on one platform also allows co-located measurements (same time, same location) which can be very important when monitoring e.g. chemical reactions.
  • I thought the days of the volkswagon sized scientific satellite was a thing of the past.

    With the price-tag that this thing has, I hope it doesn't become another reason to launch multiple, cheaper/smaller sattelites to do the same thing.

    With the track record of launch vehicles lately, I'd be a bit apprehensive to put that much money on the end of a roman candle.
  • A few weeks ago I was talking to one of the techies responsible for the database control and he said everything is stored on 1TB of solid state space. Apparantly part of the backup system was coded by (you guessed it) Micro$oft!

    Any bets on when this $2.3 billion satelite's computer system crashes, taking down guidance with it and sending the whole thing into a free fall to plummet down to earth? Hey, maybe it will hit Redmond... ;)

  • Instead of putting 10 instruments on one satellite they should put two instruments one each of 5 satellites (or 3.33 instruments on each of 3). That way if one blows up on launch you haven't lost 2.3 billion euros (about 2 billion US dollars, compared with say $200-300 million or so for NASA's recent science missions, e.g. to Mars).

  • First-hand information (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pascal Sartoretti ( 454385 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @04:14AM (#2562231)
    I was the project manager for the ground-level processor of one of the instrument (AATSR if you really want to know which one), so I think that I can provide first-hand information:
    • The data volume for our instrument was a mere 5 GB per 100 minutes orbit, hence approx. 3 GB/hour. This instrument is considered as low-volume for data size, the bigger instrument having approx. two orders of magnitude more data!
    • The design of a satellite such as ENVISAT takes years. It is true that today, one would probably design things differently. Ah, how easy it would be to know 5 years in advance how a system should be designed...
    • This satellite is purely for civilian usage, no spying or whatever. All results will be available to buy (or download for low-resolution images). If ENVISAT would have military aspects, I would certainly not be allowed to talk about it freely on /.
    • All data analysis software was developed in C++. It runs on IBM AIX clusters, but with the goal of being UNIX platform agnostic. No Linux (yet?), sorry, but many open source components were used. ESA is paranoid about vendor lock-up.
    Must I add that it was fun to work on such a project?
  • it's a weather satellite. cool stuff.

    //rdj
  • A clear sign of penis envi...
  • I wonder: do you suppose they've they assessed the environmental impact of bringing this thing down?

    -- MarkusQ

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