METEOR-3M MISSION

The SAGE III/Meteor-3M satellite mission is a joint partnership between NASA and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (RASA). It was initiated by the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission in 1994 and extends a long-term working relationship between the United States and Russia to understand Earth's environment.

SAGE III was successfully launched onboard a Meteor-3M spacecraft on December 10, 2001 at 17:18:57 UTC from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite is in a sun-synchronous orbit with an ascending node time of about 9 AM.

The Meteor-3M spacecraft is an advanced model of the Meteor spacecraft that was developed over 30 years ago. The payload includes SAGE III and other instruments designed to measure temperature and humidity profiles, clouds, surface properties, and high energy particles in the upper atmosphere.

The instrument is commanded and controlled by personnel at the SAGE III Mission Operations Center at NASA Langley Research Center. Data are downlinked twice daily to Wallops Flight Facility and to a Russian receiving station. It will be processed and will made available at the Langley Research Center's Atmospheric Sciences Data Center.

The International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) provides tracking of the Meteor-3M retroreflector array from its global network of laser ranging stations to support the mission.

Routine measurement operations began in March 2002.

The Meteor-3M mission, along with the SAGE III mission, was terminated on March 6, 2006, because of a power supply system failure resulting in loss of communication with the satellite.

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