Exelis’ Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Photo: Exelis

[Via Satellite 10-07-2014] The Exelis-built Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) will launch Oct. 7 on board a Mitsubishi Electric Corporation weather satellite, Himawari 8. The instrument will help improve weather forecasts and early warnings for severe weather in Eastern Asia and Western Pacific.

The Himawari imagers are based on the Exelis Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) designed and built for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) constellation. The Himawari 8 will be the first mission launched hosting an Exelis ABI-class instrument. As part of the Exelis intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and analytics strategic growth platform, these advanced instruments will provide better insight into the makeup of storms, higher-resolution images and will observe full-disk images of the Earth three times faster than today’s capability, according to Exelis.