Cloud radar satellite may launch this year

Graeme Stephens, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, is on a mission to change the world’s understanding of clouds.

“It’s a project that I designed and invented,” he said.

And it’s a project that NASA picked up and made into a $160 million mission.

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The project: CloudSat.  The mission: To send a satellite into orbit that will observe the inner workings of the Earth’s clouds.

Stephens, principal investigator for CloudSat, developed the concept for the mission in the early 1990s.  It wasn’t until the end of the decade that the project received NASA funding.  

The CloudSat project was selected as a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder satellite mission with the purpose of advancing human understanding of cloud abundance, and the distribution, structure and radiative properties of clouds.

The contract started in December 1999 and carries a current end date of Sept. 30, 2007.  However, an amendment to the end date is a possibility, according to Kathi Delehoy, associate vice president for research at CSU.

To date, the university has received $7.1 million from NASA for the CloudSat project.  This includes a Sept. 20 addition of $2.8 million. Delehoy said more funding is expected before the contract is up.

The project entails the first satellite-based millimeter-wavelength cloud radar put into orbit. The radar is more than 1,000 times more sensitive than existing weather radars.

Ground-based weather radars are able to detect raindrop-sized particles; the CloudSat radar can detect much smaller particles of liquid water and ice.

“We will be able to see all weather processes,” Stephens said.  This is important to understanding why and how precipitation forms.

“It’s all about the availability of fresh water,” he said.

A May 2002 report from the United Nations Environment Program cautions that with current water consumption, more than half of the world’s population will live in severely water-stressed areas by 2032.

Three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, but only about 2 percent of it is fresh.  And an even smaller percentage is consumable.

Stephens said that information gathered by CloudSat will allow researchers to understand the mechanisms of the formation of precipitation, which, he points out, is the only form of fresh-water creation.

CSU collecting data

Though the project has been in the works for years, the satellite has yet to make it off the ground.  NASA originally planed to launch the spacecraft in 2004, but there were several instrumental setbacks. NASA recently announced the launch will occur no earlier than Oct. 26.

Post launch, Stephens said, the satellite will only take about 90 minutes to reach its orbit and another one to two weeks to settle into its final orbit.

In addition to devising the mission and directing it scientifically, CSU is also responsible for collecting and processing the data that the satellite would transmit.  The university’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere will use an inexpensive and efficient data processing method that uses specially developed computer software.

“It is quite a unique and cutting-edge technology,” Stephens said, one that CSU has been developing during the last 20 years.  This year, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere will celebrate its 25th anniversary.

NASA has already contracted with the institute to collect the data for two years.  Stephens said the satellite will be able to collect data for five to seven years.

With all of this innovation brewing, many minds turn toward commercial applications of CloudSat, but not Stephens.  He acknowledged that the project is drawing the interest of various companies and organizations.

“The weather agencies are already very much hooked into this,” he said.  Additionally, the U.S. Air Force has already signed on to assist in the mission, managing the flight of the spacecraft that carries the satellite.

“The home of the mission is at CSU,” Stephens said, but added that there are partners from all over the world involved.   

Among the partners in the program include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which provides mission management; the Canadian Space Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.