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A satellite which is expected to improve weather forecasts by providing new wind information is ready to leave its UK production site for tests ahead of its launch at the end of 2017.

The Aeolus satellite has been assembled at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage and will undergo tests in France and Belgium.

ADM-Aeolus is a mission run by the European Space Agency (ESA) to provide wind profile data across the globe.

It will use a Doppler wind lidar operating in the ultraviolet spectrum to retrieve the data.

The need to address technical issues has led to years of delays, but Aeolus is now set to launch between December 2017 and February 2018 from the European spaceport in French Guiana.

ECMWF will be heavily involved in monitoring and processing the data provided by Aeolus.

Early in the mission, ECMWF will be able to look at data quality and feed the results back into data production and processing.

“I have great hopes that the new wind information from the Aeolus satellite will provide us with much-improved tropical analyses and therefore improved medium-range forecasts, including in the mid-latitudes,” ECMWF Director of Research Erland Källén said during a meeting on tropical modelling held at the Centre in November 2016.

For more details, see the Airbus Defence and Space press release on Aeolus.

(Image: ESA/ATG Medialab)