It was conceived as a scientific satellite experiment of India and France in the late 1990s. Megha-Tropiques, scheduled to fly out of Sriharikota on Wednesday, finds itself at the forefront of global tropical climate and cloud study.

In a month's time, once it starts looking down from a distance 800 km away (in a low-Earth orbit or LEO) Megha-Tropiques, scientists expect, will give insights into the turbulent tropics all the way from Asia to South America.

Its name comes from the Sanskrit ‘megha' for cloud and French for the tropics. At ISRO's Sriharikota launch port, scientists began a 50-hour countdown on Monday morning. They also started filling fuel into the stages of the PSLV rocket and taking last-minute checks of the vehicle and the ISRO-built satellite.

One of the 3-4 main sensors that will look at cloud dynamics study is called MADRAS and is jointly built by ISRO's Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad, and the French counterpart CNES or Centre National d'Etudes Spaciales.

Weather prediction

Dr R.R.Navalgund, Director of SAC, described Megha-Tropiques as a very important mission to predict monsoon and do accurate climate modelling for a region that has been tricky to grasp or predict compared to the cooler temperate latitudes.

Its contribution would go far beyond the weather instruments on other ISRO satellites.

“Today, the farmer isn't satisfied with 48-72-hour lead information [on when to expect rain and how much], he wants it 7-12 days ahead,” Dr Navalgund explained.

Or in understanding cyclones, floods or drought that many countries face every year.

The first data would be given to India Meteorology Department, which would use this to fine-tune its information and offer more accurate forecasts.

Megha-Tropiques was expected to lead to better weather forecasting given over longer lead periods.

Sharper details

The satellite would visit an area far more often than any other satellite so far: six times a day compared to one visit in 35 hours.

Its look would be closer, sharper and give minute details of how clouds were born, moved, acted and died.

A lot of rainfall information was expected which would benefit the farmer on ground.

As such, “Not just the two countries, the 21 principal investigators are excited about this. In the last few years, climate research has been increasing,” he said.

A host of national climate study institutions was involved.

The project will become part of a global constellation of related study. The US-Japan-steered project called Global Precipitation Constellation Mission (GPCM) had got delayed.

“As it got defined, we realised the larger benefits. Now Megha-Tropiques becomes the first contribution to the GPCM which is also expanding to include many countries.

After nine months, our data will be shared with the other participating nations and later, wecan access theirs,” Dr Navalgund said.

Along with this satellite, ISRO is also sending up on the PSLV a ‘customer' satellite from Luxembourg, the Vesselsat-1.

Two small satellites- SRMSat built by SRM University and JUGNU, built by IIT Kanpur are also riding along.

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