FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC

The NARL's National Space Organization (NSPO) conducted the fifth FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Data Users Workshop in conjunction with the International Conference on GPS Radio Occultation 2011 (ICGPSRO 2011) in Taipei, Taiwan from April 13-15, 2011. The joint conference attracted over 200 leading scholars, researchers, and data users around the world to mark the fifth anniversary of the successful launch of FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC. More than 160 papers from 18 countries were presented along with US/Taiwan student program, student poster competition, exhibition, and round table discussion. 

During the open ceremony, Minister Lou-Chuang Lee of Taiwan’s National Science Council (NSC) presented NSC’s prestigious special contribution awards to Jay Fein, director of the climate dynamics program in atmospheric sciences division of the National Science Foundation, and Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), for their significant contributions to make global radio occultation (RO) observations a reality. 

Invited keynote speakers, who are internationally recognized experts, included Chao-Han Liu, vice president of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, Dominique Marbouty, director general of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Abigail Harper, deputy assistant administrator of National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), John LaBrecque, head of the earth surface and interior focus area within science mission directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Gottfried Kirchengast, director of the Institute of Physics and Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz, Austria. They presented the state of the art and future prospective for their areas of expertise. 

Successfully launched on 15 April 2006, the "FORMOSAT-3 Program" is a joint Taiwan/US space mission for the establishment of the first ever satellite constellation observing system for meteorology, ionosphere, and climate utilizing the GPS-RO technique. Therefore, this project is also named Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate, or FORMOSAT/COSMIC for short. For the past five years, FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC has generated on average between 1,500 to 2,000 RO data profiles daily, and had accumulated over 2.56 million atmospheric and 2.64 million ionospheric data profiles, respectively. Currently, 1,508 registered users from 55 countries are using FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC data for the real-time forecasting applications as well as meteorology, climate, and space weather researches. FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC has been praised as “the most accurate earth thermometer in space.”

 FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC will reach the end of its five-year satellite design life in 2011; the critical capability it pROVides has already begun to degrade. As a result, the NARL-NSPO and NOAA have been working over the past few years on a project to jointly develop and launch FOMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2, a highly-reliable, next-generation RO system.