This Thursday, January 19, 2023, space experts were gathered at CLS to celebrate the successful launches of Gazelle last September and OceanSat-3 last November.
Among them CLS experts were extremely proud to be the historical operator of the Argos positioning and data collection system, now the exclusive provider of Argos environmental services.
The Argos system is the result of CNES vision and innovation. This unique satellite system is designed to support the international community in studying and protecting our planet.
In 2022, launches of Gazelle and OceanSat-3, which placed two Argos-4 payloads into orbit, brought the total number of Argos satellites to 9, a first!
The 4th generation Argos innovations are key for environmental applications:
- Boosting transmission capacity.
- Improving the sensitivity allowing the creation of low-power beacons with smaller batteries and therefore smaller animals trackable.
- 2 additional satellites bringing more revisits therefore more data collected and more locations obtained.
New fields of study, biodiviersity better protected
These new features will allow scientists to expand their fields of study, to obtain more accurate trajectories, to conduct local and regional studies, correlated with land use data.
These new capabilities of the system will allow better mapping of species habitats, a key data for conservation.
The revolution of beacons
This new generation also accelerates the beacon revolution.
Thanks to improved transmission capabilities, additional sensors will be able to transmit more and more environmental data (temperature, pressure, acoustics, HF Radar, etc.). This information will not only enable a better understanding of the environmental conditions that influence the animal’s behavior, but will also allow enable a better characterization of the impact of climate change on species.
Behavior monitoring now possible
With greater transmission capacity, scientists will be able to better collect accelerometer data.
These data are key to model the animals’ movements in 3D and to characterize their behavior (hunting, resting, feeding).
Oceanographie enhanced
In the context of global warming, where the understanding of ocean-atmosphere exchanges is key, the need for big data volume is growing. In-situ operational oceanography is now moving towards a growing use of satellite collection systems: biogeochemical sensors, acoustic sensors, cameras, high-resolution sensors…
The new Argos-4 modulations are an answer to this growing need.
New types of data are also appearing, such as photo data. This can now be collected by satellite via underwater photo triggers connected to Argos-4HD.
In-situ observation systems have been improved to transmit the wave spectrum, and new generation oceanographic platforms such as those co-developed by CLS are used to calibrate Earth observation satellites such as CFOSAT.
Argos-4 serving new applications
The Argos system has revolutionized our knowledge of our planet. Scientists themselves say that the system has made it possible to rewrite the history of animal migrations.
It will soon be used to manage wild, reintroduced or domestic herds, to support sustainable and ambitious agriculture in a context of threatened food security, and to improve hydrology, the fight against plastic pollution and air quality monitoring.
These are just some of the new applications that CLS experts have developed to help you better connect our planet and make it a sustainable one.
