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CloudSat is an international mission, made possible by partnerships and contributions from the Canadian Space Agency, the U.S. Air Force, the Communications Research Laboratory of Japan, the U.S. Department of Energy, and research institutions in the USA, Japan, Canada and Europe.
The CloudSat mission deploys the first spaceborne 94 GHz cloud profiling radar in space. The mission was selected under the NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Program with a scheduled launch for the later part of 2004.
The CloudSat Mission is a new satellite mission jointly developed by NASA, JPL, the Canadian Agency, Colorado State University, and the US AirForce to acquire a global data set of vertical cloud structure and its variability.
This paper describes the CloudSat mission, a recent winner of the NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder mission competition.
This paper describes the mission design for CloudSat that enables and creates this virtual platform. It describes CloudSat's formations with CALIPSO separated by only 15-seconds and its formation with Aqua separated by no more than 90 seconds, and on average by about 61 seconds.
The Cloud Profiling Radar, the primary science instrument of the CloudSat Mission, is a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar.
CloudSat will be the first spaceborne deployment of a 94-GHz cloud profiling radar.
CloudSat is a satellite experiment designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space. The expected launch of CloudSat is planned for 2004 and, once launched, CloudSat will orbit in formation as part of a constellation of satellites including NASA's Aqua and Aura satellites, a NASA-CNES lidar satellite (P-C) and a CNES satellite carrying a polarimeter (PARASOL). A unique feature that CloudSat brings to this constellation is the ability to fly a precise orbit enabling the fields of view of the CloudSat radar to be overlapped with the P-C lidar footprint and the other measurements of the EOS constellation. The precision of this overlap creates a unique multi-satellite observing system for studying the atmospheric processes essential to the hydrological cycle. The vertical profile of cloud properties provided by CloudSat fills a critical gap in the investigation of feedback mechanisms linking clouds to climate. Measuring the vertical profile of cloud properties requires a combination of active and passive instruments, and this will be achieved by combining the radar data of CloudSat with active and passive data from other sensors of the constellation. This paper describes the underpinning science, and gives an overview of the mission, and provides some idea of the expected products and anticipated application of these products. Notably, the CloudSat mission is expected to provide new knowledge about global cloudiness, stimulating new areas of research on clouds including data assimilation and cloud parameterization. The mission also provides an important opportunity to demonstrate active sensor technology for future scientific and tactical applications. The CloudSat mission is a partnership between NASA/JPL, the Canadian Space Agency, Colorado State University, the US Air Force, and the US Department of Energy.
CloudSat is a joint US/Canadian spaceborne science mission for global measurements of atmospheric cloud structures. Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) has already captured many stunning profiles of cloud/precipitation structures, some have not been seen before. Observation of storms' cloud formation, in conjunction with data from other remote sensors, will hopefully improve quality of natural hazards' forecasts.
In this paper, we will present the system design and the expected performance of this instrument, as well as the state-of-the-art millimeter-wave technologies employed by this instrument.
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The mission's primary goal is to furnish data needed to improve how cloud and cloud-climate feedbacks are parameterized in global circulation models (GCMs).