Optical Design of Arctic Weather Satellite Microwave Sounder

The Arctic Weather Satellite (AWS) mission by the European Space Agency is a prototype mission for a constellation of small meteorological satellites. The AWS mission is intended to be a lower cost mission at a faster development rate than previous meteorological missions. The payload is a cross-track scanning radiometer which operates in the 50-57, 89, 165-183 and 325 GHz frequency bands. This paper presents the optics of the AWS radiometer. The calibration concepts for in flight and onground are also discussed.