A - C
CALIPSO
CALIPSO was selected as an Earth System Science Pathfinder satellite mission in December 1998 to address the role of clouds and aerosols in the Earth's radiation budget. NASA Langley Research Center is leading the mission and is providing overall project management, systems engineering, payload mission operations, data validation, processing and archival. CNES is providing a PROTEUS spacecraft, the imaging infrared radiometer (IIR), payload-to-spacecraft integration, and spacecraft mission operations. CALIPSO is being developed through collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). CALIPSO will fly a three-channel lidar and passive instruments to provide key measurements of aerosol and cloud properties needed to improve climate predictions. CALIPSO is co-manifested with the CloudSat satellite for a October 2004 launch on a Delta II launch vehicle. They both will operate as part of a constellation of satellites including EOS Aqua, EOS Aura, and PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar), which is being developed by CNES. The satellites of the constellation will fly in a 705-km circular sun-synchronous polar orbit with a nominal ascending node equatorial crossing time of 13:30 local time. This constellation will provide nearly simultaneous and co-located observations that will allow numerous synergies to be realized by combining CALIPSO observations with complementary observations from other platforms. This unique data set of aerosol and cloud optical and physical properties and aerosol-cloud interactions will substantially increase our understanding of the climate system and the potential for climate change. For more information on the CALIPSO project, see: "http://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/" For more information on NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program, see: "http://essp.gsfc.nasa.gov/" For more information on Earth Science Enterprise (ESE): "http://earth.nasa.gov/"