The German small satellite CHAMP is on the final track for launch on July 15, 2000 into a circular, near-polar and 460 km altitude orbit. The satellite carries a number of instruments, partly provided by NASA, CNES and USAF, with synergetic use for precise orbit determination, global gravity and magnetic field recovery, and GPS atmosphere and ionosphere profiling. The mission is projected for a five years' lifetime while the orbit slowly decays to below 300 km altitude. The ground segment is run by DLR for mission operations and by GFZ for mission/science interaction, science data processing, archiving and distribution. Ionosphere profiling is a task of DLR. CHAMP's commissioning phase for system verification, payload data and software calibration/validation is supposed to last nine months, followed by the nominal exploitation phase. (C) 2002 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
