(U) Mark IV-B

(The effects of any budget/program decisions made since the information was collected during 1997-98 are NOT reflected in the National Security Space Road Map (NSSRM).)

Overview: (U)
(U) The Mark IV-B is a meteorological satellite terminal designed to support tactical operations as part of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) User Segment.  It is replacing the original tactical terminals, developed by the DMSP program office in the 1970s, which were designed to receive high resolution vis/IR polar weather satellite data.  The new Mark IV-B terminals are capable of simultaneously ingesting high resolution electro-optical and microwave data from both polar and geostationary satellites. They are complete meteorological workstations and support automated scheduling, tracking, and weather product generation/distribution for up to 10 days in advance. Automated merging of satellite data, as well as state of the art meteorological tools such as Dvorak analysis for tropical storm typing are also featured. Seven Mark IVB's are deployed worldwide.

Description: (U)
(U)  The Mark IV-B satellite terminal is capable of acquiring, ingesting, decrypting, and processing data from two types of polar-orbiting satellites (DMSP and Television and Next-generation InfraRed Operational Satellites (TIROS-N)) and three types of geostationary satellites (the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite Next Generation (GOES-NEXT), Ground-water Modeling System (GMS), and Meteorological Satellite (METEOSAT)). 

(U)  The Mark IV-B has many uses.  It provides mass storage backup and playback of raw satellite data.  It maintains a database for storing and retrieving meteorological information.  It can also manipulate and enhance meteorological data and satellite imagery (either displayed or database imagery) in order to generate hard copy transparency or paper products.  In addition, the system has the capability to produce animated imagery products at rates ranging from 0.1 to 10 frames per second.

(U)  The Mark IV-B demodulates, decrypts, and processes the DMSP satellite 1.024 Mb/s Real-Time Direct (RTD) data stream containing visible and infrared imagery data, one channel Fine, one channel Smooth, and mission sensor data.  The DMSP Fine imagery is ingested, corrected for Operational Line Scanner (OLS) motion and Earth curvature, and Earth-location information is added to produce images with 0.3-nautical-mile resolution.  Then the DMSP RTD Fine data is averaged to create DMSP Smooth imagery of OLS visible and infrared data at a resolution of 1.5 nautical miles. 

(U)  The Mark IV-B processes the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I), Special Sensor Microwave Temperature Sounder (SSM/T), and Special Sensor Microwave Water Vapor Profiler (SSM/T-2) data received from DMSP satellites.  The SSM/T data is processed to generate meteorological products such as brightness temperature fields, temperature-pressure soundings, temperature-height soundings, gridded temperature and thickness fields, tropopause height, temperature, and pressure.  The Mark IV-B is also capable of receiving and processing the DMSP Real-Time Data Smooth 66 kb/s data stream.

User Impact: (U)
(U) They are complete meteorological workstations which support automated scheduling, tracking, and weather product generation/distribution for up to 10 days in advance. 

Programmatics: (U)
(U) Operational.

Related Initiatives: (U)
(U) AN/SMQ-11, DMSP, GOES, Mark IV, STT

Related Requirements: (U)
(U) None.

Related Categories: (U)
(U) User Equipment

Road Map Placements: (U)
(U) ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING.

Lead Office: (U)
(U) Air Force.

Date of Information: (U)
28 July 1998

(The effects of any budget/program decisions made since the information was collected during 1997-98 are NOT reflected in the National Security Space Road Map (NSSRM).)