Design and development of the Sentinel-3 Microwave Radiometer

The Sentinel-3 (S-3) Microwave Radiometer (MWR) is being developed by EADS CASA Espacio (ECE) under contract with Thales Alenia Space France (TAS-F) and the European Space Agency (ESA). This instrument, along with a radar altimeter and a precise orbit determination package, is part of a topographic mission in the frame of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The MWR will determine the amount of humidity in the atmosphere in order to correct for the wet tropospheric path delay of the altimeter data by means of brightness temperature measurements at 23.8 GHz and 36.5 GHz. This paper describes the design and development plan for the MWR instrument.