CloudSat is a NASA Earth Sciences Systems Pathfinder (ESSP) mission. ESSP missions are relatively low cost missions that require that the mission be built, tested and launched in a short time interval – normally within 3 years. ESSP missions are peer-reviewed science investigations selected from proposals submitted to the NASA Office of Earth Science. They are lead by a Principal Investigator (PI) who is often affiliated with a university. The PI for CloudSat is Dr. Graeme Stephens who is a professor in the Atmospheric Science Department.
CloudSat is a satellite experiment designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space and, for the first time, will simultaneously observe cloud and precipitation. The primary CloudSat instrument is a 94-GHz, nadir-pointing, Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR).
CloudSat will be launched in tandem with a second ESSP mission called CALIPSO. The CloudSat will ride on an RS2000 spacecraft built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder CO.
A unique aspect of this mission is that CloudSat will be flying in formation with other Earth Sciences missions. CloudSat will be a part of a constellation of satellites that currently include NASA's EOS Aqua and Aura satellites as well as a NASA-CNES lidar satellite (CALIPSO), and a CNES satellite carrying a polarimeter (PARASOL). A unique feature that CloudSat brings to the constellation is the ability to fly a precise orbit enabling the fields of view of the CloudSat radar to be overlapped with the lidar footprint and the other measurements of the constellation. The precision of this overlap creates a unique multi-satellite observing system for studying the atmospheric processes of the hydrological cycle. Additional information about the CloudSat mission may be found at http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu.
All of the science data processing support for the CloudSat mission will be provided by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). The CloudSat standard data products will be produced at the CloudSat Data Processing Center, located in the ATS-CIRA Research Center (adjacent to CIRA and the Atmospheric Science Department). CloudSat data will be downlinked to the U.S. Air Force Satellite Control Network and transferred via the RDT&E Support Center (RSC), in Albuquerque NM, to the CloudSat DPC. CIRA is responsible for the implementation of the hardware and software infrastructure that is necessary to produce the nine standard data products. Members of the CloudSat Science Team will develop the Science algorithms and software for each of these products. Four universities and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) are participants on the CloudSat algorithm development team.
During the Operational (on-orbit) Phase, the DPC will be staffed by CIRA employees, Science and Technology Corporation personnel (under a sub-contract to CIRA), and part-time CSU students.