CFOSAT Mission requirements

CFOSAT is a pre-operational mission of joint measurements of winds and waves which aims is to supply wind/waves observations in near-real time to the meteorological agencies to improve their forecast and sea state models. These measurements will also be supplied to the scientific community for the oceanographic and climate research to improve the sea models as well as the understanding of the influence of sea state in surface fluxes.

Mission duration: 3 years at least,
Data availability: Near-real time (less than three hours after acquisition) for the meteorological agencies (to be confirmed),
Data distribution:

on request through a server and an authentication for the scientists,
systematically through meteorological servers for the meteorological agencies (to be confirmed).

Coverage: global at a 13 days scale for SWIM and at a 3 days scale for SCAT,
Altitude: ~500 km