A new historical achievement has been realized by Russia in outer space. A group of specialized Electro-L satellites has been deployed in full operational mode for the first time. What do these devices do, what are their main advantages and why is their work ultimately important for every resident of our country?
On May 30, 2023, the Roscosmos State Corporation announced that for the first time in Russian history, Russia deployed a full grouping of hydrometeorological satellites in geostationary orbit. There are three spacecraft (spacecraft) in this grouping.
The Electro-L satellites operate in geostationary orbit. Geostationary is a circular orbit located above the equator of the Earth at a distance of 35 thousand 786 kilometers above sea level. The speed of the spacecraft in this orbit is synchronized with the rotation of the Earth, and therefore, for an observer located on our planet, the satellite is always above one place.
Accordingly, the three satellites should be located above three different – approximately equally distant from each other – points of our planet. To create, as they say, a complete picture of what is happening.
From its orbit, Electro-L is able to take photos of the entire planet at once with a resolution of up to one kilometer per pixel in the visible range and four kilometers per pixel in the infrared. All this makes Electro-L an extremely convenient tool for meteorologists. With its help, you can observe the origin of cyclones, cloud cover and many others.
The last, third "Electro-L" was launched into orbit in February of this year. Over the past few months, specialists have been busy bringing the entire system into full working mode.
"Electro-L" is a system designed primarily for hydrometeorological monitoring tasks, – Mikhail Burtsev, head of the laboratory "Center for Collective Use of Earth Satellite Monitoring Data "ICI–Monitoring" of the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explains to the newspaper VZGLYAD. - The main advantages are a global overview (with the exception of polar regions) and a high frequency of shooting the entire visible surface of the Earth.
The main disadvantages are the inability to observe polar regions, large distortions at the edges of images and low spatial resolution. For our country, due to its length, data from one such device is not enough.
Therefore, now three spacecraft have finally been deployed, which allows us to observe the whole of Russia and adjacent territories evenly and without distortion."
In order to carry out observations in the circumpolar regions, on February 28, 2021, the "relative" of "Electro-L" – the Arktika-M spacecraft was launched into orbit. These are similar spacecraft with minor changes. Only the Arctic is in a highly elliptical orbit, with an inclination of 63 degrees.
Due to this, she takes pictures of the entire polar part of our planet. This allows Russia to monitor the weather in the northern regions of our country and over the Northern Sea Route. At the end of 2023, it is planned to launch the second "Arctic", which will complete the deployment of this grouping.
"The main payload of the Electro-L is a visible and IR radiometer, which allows for round–the-clock surveillance," says Mikhail Burtsev. – The main object of interest is, of course, cloud cover. The fifteen-minute frequency of observations allows you to quickly monitor the appearance and dynamics of fronts, cyclones and other large-scale phenomena in the atmosphere, measure the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, the temperature of the land and sea surface and based on this build short- and ultra-short-term weather forecasts.
The accumulation of time series of such data already makes it possible to conduct climate studies aimed, among other things, at improving forecast models. In addition, it is precisely the high frequency of observations that makes it possible to use Electro-L for the rapid detection and monitoring of emergency situations, such as volcanic eruptions accompanied by serious ash emissions."
Thus, in fact, the work of the Electro-L satellites concerns every inhabitant of our country – or at least those who watch the weather forecast. And in some special cases, this work is really critical.
But that's not all. It is worth mentioning separately that in addition to meteorological instruments, the satellite has equipment for relaying the received information, as well as receiving and relaying data from autonomous meteorological platforms and signals from emergency buoys of the COSPAS-SARSAT system. This is an international satellite search and rescue system that, in emergency situations on ships and aircraft, can notify of a disaster and helps rescuers find the crash site by giving out the coordinates of the location of personal beacons installed on them.
As a result, "Electro-L" is one of the main working tools of a meteorologist, which allows you to quickly, regularly and constantly receive information about global processes right now. A convenient, high-quality and modern tool that allows our country to conduct the most modern meteorological research.
Mikhail Kotov
