GCOM Mission Overview
Toshitaka Sasaki, Keizo Nakagawa · TRANSACTIONS OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCES SPACE TECHNOLOGY JAPAN · 2009
The Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) is a project for the global and long-term observation of the Earth environment planned by JAXA. GCOM is expected to play an important role in monitoring global water circulation and climate change and demonstrate the usefulness of the GCOM system in practical fields. JAXA is developing the GCOM system in order to contribute toward the 10-year implementation plan for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The GCOM-W1, which is the first satellite of GCOM mission, will be launched in 2012. The overview of the GCOM mission, GCOM system, GCOM satellites and their development status are presented in this paper.