HIMAWARI 8/9

The HIMAWARI 8/9 are geo-stationary weather satellites, successors to Japan Meteorological Agency's (JMA) Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) series. Himawari 8 was launched by JMA in July 2015 and was installed at PAGASA last December 2015. It is the most utilized satellite imagery in real-time weather forecasting, tropical cyclone analysis and for research purposes as it generates images every 10 minutes. Himawari 9 was launched in November 2016 and started back up operations in March 2017. Their operation has been switched to place Himawari 9 in the main observational role with Himawari 8 as back-up on 13 December 2022.