Aqua Satellite Mission Summary

CEOS EO HANDBOOK – MISSION SUMMARY - Aqua -

Full Name

Aqua (formerly EOS PM-1)
aka EOS PM-1

Status

Operational (extended)

Mission Agencies

NASA , INPE , JAXA

Launch Date

04 May 2002

Mission Links

mission site | data access portal

EOL Date

Sep 2026

EO Portal Info

NORAD Catalog #

27424 (TLE)

International Designator

2002-022A

Orbit Type

Sun-synchronous

Orbit Period

98.8 minutes

Orbit Sense

Ascending

Orbit Inclination

98.2 deg

Orbit Altitude

705 km

Orbit Longitude

Orbit LST

13:50

Repeat Cycle

16 days

Objectives and Applications

6-year nominal mission life, currently in extended operations. Atmospheric dynamics / water and energy cycles, cloud formation, precipitation and radiative properties, air / sea fluxes of energy and moisture, sea ice extent and heat exchange with the atmosphere. The HSB instrument failed on the 5th of February 2003.

Mission Measurements

Category	Parameter	Instrument(s)
Atmosphere	Aerosols	MODIS
	Atmospheric Humidity Fields	AIRS, AMSR-E, AMSU-A, HSB, MODIS
	Cloud type, amount and cloud top temperature	AIRS, AMSU-A, MODIS
	Cloud particle properties and profile	AMSR-E, AMSU-A, HSB, MODIS
	Liquid water and precipitation rate	AIRS, AMSR-E, AMSU-A
	Ozone	AIRS, MODIS
	Radiation budget	AIRS, AMSU-A, CERES, MODIS
	Trace gases (excluding ozone)	AIRS
	Atmospheric Temperature Fields	AIRS, AMSU-A, MODIS
Land	Albedo and reflectance	MODIS
	Soil moisture	AMSR-E, AMSU-A
	Vegetation	MODIS
	Surface temperature (land)	AIRS, AMSU-A, MODIS
	Multi-purpose imagery (land)	MODIS
Ocean	Ocean colour/biology	MODIS
	Ocean surface winds	AMSR-E, AMSU-A
	Surface temperature (ocean)	AIRS, AMSR-E, MODIS
	Multi-purpose imagery (ocean)	MODIS
Snow & Ice	Snow cover, edge and depth	AIRS, AMSR-E, AMSU-A, MODIS
	Sea ice cover, edge and thickness	AIRS, AMSR-E, AMSU-A, MODIS

Mission Instruments

AIRS - Atmospheric Infra-red Sounder

AMSR-E - Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS

AMSU-A - Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A

CERES - Cloud and the Earth's Radiant Energy System

HSB - Humidity Sounder for Brazil

MODIS - MODerate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

OpenSearch Datasets

Selected IDN OpenSearch Results (search all 985 )
ABoVE: Angular-corrected MODIS MAIAC Reflectance across Alaska and Canada, 2000-2017

ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2015-2016

ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, Landcover and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2014

ABoVE: Burned Area, Depth, and Combustion for Alaska and Canada, 2001-2019 $This dataset provides annual gridded estimates of fire locations and associated burn fraction per pixel for Alaska and Canada at approximately 500 m spatial resolution for the period 2001-2019. Gridded predictions of carbon combustion and burn depth for the same period within the ABoVE extended domain using the burn area maps and field data are also available. Fire locations and date of burn (DOB) were detected by MODIS-derived active fire products. Burned area was primarily estimated from finer-scale Landsat imagery using a differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm and upscaled to an approximate 500 m MODIS resolution. Aboveground combustion, belowground combustion, and burn depth were statistically modeled at the pixel level for every mapped burned pixel in the ABoVE extended domain based on field observations across Alaska and western Canada. Predictor variables included remotely sensed indicators of fire severity, topography, soils, climate, and fire weather. Quality flags for burned area and combustion are available. Fire is the dominant disturbance agent in Alaskan and Canadian boreal ecosystems and releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. These data are useful for studies of disturbance, fire ecology, and carbon cycling in boreal ecosystems.$
ABoVE: Corrected MODIS MAIAC Reflectance at Tower Sites, Alaska and Canada, 2000-2016

ABoVE: Dall Sheep Response to Snow and Landscape Covariates, Alaska, 2005-2008

ABoVE: Environmental Conditions During Fall Moose Hunting Seasons, Alaska, 2000-2016

ABoVE: Fractional Open Water Cover for Pan-Arctic and ABoVE-Domain Regions, 2002-2015 $This data set provides land surface fractional open water cover maps for two overlapping regions: the entire pan-Arctic region (latitude > 45 degrees) and the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) domain across Alaska and Canada. The data are a 10-day averaged time step at 5-km spatial resolution for the period 2002-2015. Data represent the aerial portion of a grid cell covered by open water. The data were produced using high frequency (89 GHz) brightness temperatures from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), with other ancillary inputs from AMSR-E/AMSR2 25-km products and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The resulting data record for fractional water is suitable for documenting open water patterns and inundation dynamics in boreal-Arctic ecosystems experiencing rapid climate change.$
ABoVE: High Resolution Cloud-Free Snow Cover Extent and Snow Depth, Alaska, 2001-2017

ABoVE: Ignitions, Burned Area, and Emissions of Fires in AK, YT, and NWT, 2001-2018

Selected FedEO OpenSearch Results (view all 210 results: browser , table )
Aqua/AMSR-E L2 AMSR2 Format Soil Moisture Content

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 Sea Surface Wind (1-Month, 0.25 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format Cloud Liquid Water (1-Day, 0.25 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format Sea Ice Concentration (1-Month, 0.25 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format Snow Depth (1-Month, 0.1 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format 10.65GHz Mean for Brightness Temperature (1-Day, 0.25 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format 89.0GHz Mean for Brightness Temperature (1-Day, 0.1 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 AMSR2 Format 18.7GHz Mean for Brightness Temperature (1-Day, 0.1 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 36.5GHz-V Mean for Brightness Temperature (1-Month, 0.25 deg)

Aqua/AMSR-E L3 10.65GHz-H Mean for Brightness Temperature (1-Month, 0.25 deg)

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