한국항공우주연구원

Observing the nation’s seas with a geostationary ocean monitoring satellite

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs announced that the GOCI (Geostationary Ocean Color Imager), which will be mounted on COMS (Communication Ocean and Meteorological Satellite), scheduled to be launched in June 2009, was successfully developed and would be transported from France to Korea on the 24th of November.

The GOCI was jointly developed by KARI and Astrium. The successful development of the GOCI is a 5-year long achievement after the Ministry first designated KARI as the responsible research institute in 2003.

So far, Korea has focused on the development of communications-based geostationary satellites. COMS, however, is a multipurpose satellite with an earth observation mission. In particular, it is the first geostationary satellite mounted with the GOCI which can observe sea areas around the Korean Peninsula at all times.

The GOCI will be assembled and mounted on the satellite, go through space environment tests, and launched in June, 2009 from French Guiana (South America). After the launch, the ocean satellite center of KORDI (Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute) will receive and analyze the satellite data which will be accessible by users.

The satellite images observed by the GOCI will be effectively used for marine land management including marine plankton distribution, oceanography information on fisheries, suspended sediments, pollutants’ movement, current circulation and marine ecosystem monitoring.

An official of the Ministry said, “We expect that Korea will play a leading role in the ocean monitoring satellite area with the successful development of the GOCI.”