Megha-Tropiques

Indo-French satellite for Atmospheric Research. Presentation to the ISRO centre in Bangalore during the working visit of the Head of State and his wife to India (December 4, 2010).

Megha-Tropiques (MT) was born of a collaboration between the French national space agency CNES and its Indian counterpart, the Bangalore-based ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). Megha means “cloud” in Sanskrit.
This mini-satellite, launched in late 2010 for a period of three years, at an altitude of 865 km, is intended to help gather data for Atmospheric Research. It carries out simultaneous measurements of water vapour, clouds, water condensed in clouds, precipitation and evaporation, information which will help to refine our understanding of the contribution of the water cycle to the climate dynamics in the tropical atmosphere and our understanding of processes related to tropical convection. Weighing in at 1000 pounds, Megha-Tropiques uses an Indian platform (IRS) consisting of MADRAS (microwave imager for the study of precipitation and cloud properties), SAPPHIRE (microwave radiometer for recreating vertical profiles and horizontal distribution of water vapour), and SCARAB (radiometer for measuring radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere).