# Megha-Tropiques
*missions*

Megha-Tropiques was a CNES-ISRO joint tropical climate mission. Launched October 2011 on PSLV-C18; 867 km circular orbit at 20 degree inclination for tropical coverage. Carried SAPHIR (humidity sounder), MADRAS (microwave imager, failed Dec 2012), ScaRaB (radiation budget), and ROSA (GPS-RO, failed Apr 2019). Operations ended 15 December 2021 due to attitude failure; controlled reentry Pacific Ocean 7 March 2023.

## Specifications
- **operator**: isro
- **current status**: ended
- **actual launch**: 2011-10-12
- **entity type**: mission
- **last verified date**: 2026-06-11
- **verified by**: agency-doc
- **claim status**: agency-sourced
- **provider**: isro
- **attributes**: {"summary":"Megha-Tropiques was a CNES-ISRO joint tropical climate mission. Launched October 2011 on PSLV-C18; 867 km circular orbit at 20 degree inclination for tropical coverage. Carried SAPHIR (humidity sounder), MADRAS (microwave imager, failed Dec 2012), ScaRaB (radiation budget), and ROSA (GPS-RO, failed Apr 2019). Operations ended 15 December 2021 due to attitude failure; controlled reentry Pacific Ocean 7 March 2023.","operator":"isro","current_status":"ended","actual_launch":"2011-10-12"}
- **relevance**: in-scope

## Editorial
Megha-Tropiques was a joint CNES-ISRO tropical climate mission launched 12 October 2011 on PSLV-C18. The satellite operated in a near-circular orbit at 867 km altitude and 20 degree inclination, a low-inclination design chosen specifically to maximise revisit frequency over the tropics rather than achieve polar or sun-synchronous coverage.[^oscar-megha-tropiques][^eoportal-megha-tropiques]

The instrument suite comprised four payloads: SAPHIR (Sounder for Atmospheric Profiling of Humidity in the Intertropical Regions), a six-channel microwave humidity sounder at 183.31 GHz; MADRAS (Microwave Analysis and Detection of Rain and Atmospheric Structures), a conical-scanning microwave imager; ScaRaB (Scanner for Radiation Budget), measuring outgoing shortwave and longwave radiation; and ROSA, a GPS radio occultation receiver. MADRAS developed a defect from December 2012 and was deactivated the following year, according to mission documentation.[^eoportal-megha-tropiques] ROSA ceased functioning after the GPS week-number rollover in April 2019.[^oscar-megha-tropiques]

An attitude control failure brought operations to an end on 15 December 2021. ISRO formally declared the mission concluded in April 2022; WMO OSCAR records January 2022 as the inactive date.[^isro-reentry][^oscar-megha-tropiques][^aeris-end-of-mission] A controlled destructive re-entry over the South Pacific Ocean was executed on 7 March 2023.[^isro-reentry] SAPHIR and ScaRaB operated from launch in October 2011 until the mission's decommissioning in December 2021, exceeding the design lifetime and providing a 10-year tropical humidity and radiation-budget record.

## Compositional position
- Megha-Tropiques --[mission_payloads]--> saphir (products)

## Sources
- [oscar-megha-tropiques] | WMO OSCAR - Megha-Tropiques satellite record | https://space.oscar.wmo.int/satellites/view/megha_tropiques | tier=agency-doc | accessed=2026-06-11
- [eoportal-megha-tropiques] | Megha-Tropiques mission, eoPortal | https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/megha-tropiques | tier=community | accessed=2026-06-11
- [isro-reentry] | ISRO - Controlled Re-entry Experiment of Megha-Tropiques-1 | https://www.isro.gov.in/controlled_re_entry_experiment.html | tier=agency-doc | accessed=2026-06-11
- [aeris-end-of-mission] | The Megha-Tropiques satellite mission comes to an end, AERIS | https://www.aeris-data.fr/en/the-megha-tropiques-satellite-mission-comes-to-an-end/ | tier=operator-engineering | accessed=2026-06-11

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Source: https://eo-atlas.org/missions/megha-tropiques
Maintainer: SpectraWorks B.V. (CC-BY 4.0)