THE FIRST METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE OF CHINA——FENGYUN-Ⅰ

At 0430 Beijing summer Time 7 September 1988,the first Chinese meteorological satellite.named Fengyun-1(FY-1 meaning observing the wind and clouds in the atmosphere) was launched into the near-polar sun-synchronous orbit successfully at the Taiyuan Satellite Launching Center,Shanxi Province by Long March-4 launching vehicle which was developed by the Ministry of Aeronautics and Astronautics.FY-1 satellite is a hexahedron of 1.4m×1.4m×1.2m (Fig.1).The attitude of satellite is three-axis. stabilized.The satellite at an altitude of 900 km operates around the earth 14 passes per day with a period of 102.86 min.The main instruments aboard the satellite are two Advanced Very High Resolution Radsometer (AVHRR) and Space Environmental Monitor.Table 1 gives the major specifications of AVHRR.