East Asia and Western Pacific METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATE

131
CHINESE POLAR ORBITING METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE FY-1
XU JIANMIN
Satellite Meteorological Center,
State Meteorological Administration ,
Beijing.
1. INTRODUCTION
China successfully launched its polar orbiting satellite, named
FY-1, from a satellite launching Center in Taiyuan, Shanxi province,at
5:30 Beijing Summer time on 7th September, 1988. The satellite is a
three-axis stabilized polar orbiting platform in a sun-synchronous orbit.
It is the first Chinese experimental and trial meteorological satellite.
The principal payload of the satellite is a multi-spectral scanning
radiometer. This provides the basic data of the FY-1 system as
three visible channels, one near-infra-red channel and one infra-red
channel product images. Various image products, land and ocean digital
remote sensing products are derived through the ground data-receiving
and processing system. The communication equipment aboard the satellite
in real-time broadcasts High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) and
Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) data over the world. The data
format of HRPT and APT are compatible with the NOAA satellite.
2. THE SATELLITE
2.1 Orbit
FY-1 satellite is in a sun-synchronous orbit. The orbit parameters
are: