NASA will be performing network maintenance on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, between 11:00 AM EST and 1:00 PM EST (16:00 to 18:00 UTC). There will be two periods of about five minutes of disruption. During these peroids, the ILRS website will be unavailable during the outages. If you experience problems outside this window, contact support-cddis@nasa.gov.

close window
general navigation structure general satellite info ilrs support retroreflector info center of mass site performance info

HY-2

Jump to: Mission Objectives, Mission Instrumentation, Mission Parameters, Additional Information

Mission Photos:

HY-2
Courtesy of AVISO

Mission Objectives:

The HY-2 satellite is an oceanographic remote sensing satellite series developed by China's National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS); four satellites are planned: HY-2A (2011), HY-2B (2018), HY-2C (TBD), HY-2D (TBD). The objective of HY-2 is to monitor the dynamic ocean environment with radar sensors to measure sea surface wind field, sea surface height and sea surface temperature. It will include a dual-frequency radar altimeter in Ku and C-bands, a Ku-band rotating scatterometer and microwave imager. The orbit is sun-synchronous: the first 2 years with a 14-day cycle, then one year with geodetic orbit (168-day cycle, 5-day approx. subcycle).

Mission Instrumentation:

HY-2A will have the following instrumentation onboard:

  • Micro-Wave Radiometer
  • DORIS
  • Retroreflector Array
  • Ku-band Rotating Pencil-beam Scatterometer
  • Ku- and C-band Pulsed-Limited Nadir Radar Altimeter
  • GPS
Mission Parameters:
HY-2A HY-2B HY-2C HY-2D
Sponsor: NSOAS NSOAS NSOAS NSOAS
Expected Life: 3 years 3 years 5 years 3 years
Primary Applications: Oceanography Oceanography Oceanography Oceanography
COSPAR ID: 1104301 1808101 2006601 2104301
SIC Code: 2201 2208 2209 2211
Satellite Catalog (NORAD) Number: 37781 43655 46469 48621
Launch Date: 16-Aug-2011 25-Oct-2018 21-Sep-2020 30-May-2021
RRA Size:        
RRA Shape: hemisphere hemisphere hemisphere hemisphere
Reflectors: 9 corner cubes 9 corner cubes 9 corner cubes 9 corner cubes
Size of Reflector: 16.5 mm 16.5 mm 33 mm diameter
26.2 mm height
16.5 mm
Orbit: circular circular circular circular
Inclination: 99.35 degrees 99.35 degrees 66 degrees 66 degrees
Altitude: 971 km 971 km 957 km 971 km
Eccentricity: 0.00117 0.00117 0.000012 0.00117

Additional Information:

Web sites: