CloudSat
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Artist's Concept of CloudSat
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| Mission type | Atmospheric research |
|---|---|
| Operator | NASA |
| COSPAR ID | 2006-016B |
| SATCAT no. | 29107 |
| Website | CloudSat home page |
| Mission duration | Planned: 22 months Elapsed: 11 years, 6 days |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Bus | BCP-2000 |
| Manufacturer | Ball Aerospace |
| Launch mass | 700 kg (1,543 lb) |
| Dimensions | 2.54 × 2.03 × 2.29 m (8.3 × 6.7 × 7.5 ft) (H × L × W) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | April 28, 2006, 10:02:16 UTC |
| Rocket | Delta II 7420-10C |
| Launch site | Vandenberg SLC-2W |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Regime | LEO |
| Semi-major axis | 7,080.59 km (4,399.67 mi) |
| Eccentricity | 0.0000824 |
| Perigee | 709 km (441 mi) |
| Apogee | 710 km (440 mi) |
| Inclination | 98.23 degrees |
| Period | 98.83 minutes |
| RAAN | 330.82 degrees |
| Argument of perigee | 91.62 degrees |
| Mean anomaly | 14.57 degrees |
| Mean motion | 14.57 |
| Epoch | 25 January 2015, 03:10:38 UTC |
| Revolution no. | 46,515 |
CloudSat is a NASA Earth observation satellite, which was launched on a Delta II rocket on April 28, 2006. It uses radar to measure the altitude and properties of clouds, adding to information on the relationship between clouds and climate in order to help resolve questions about global warming.
CloudSat flies in formation in the "A Train", with several other satellites: Aqua, Aura, CALIPSO and the French PARASOL.
The mission was selected under NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program in 1999. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, designed and built the spacecraft.
CloudSat's primary mission was scheduled to continue for 22 months in order to allow more than one seasonal cycle to be observed.
The main instrument on CloudSat is the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. The radar instrument was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, with hardware contributions from the Canadian Space Agency. The overall design of the CPR is simple, well understood, and has a strong heritage from the many cloud radars already in operation in ground-based and airborne applications. Most of the design parameters and subsystem configurations are nearly identical to those for the Airborne Cloud Radar, which has been flying on the NASA DC-8 aircraft since 1998.
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