National Aeronautics and Space Administration - http://www.nasa.gov
Cloudsat
CloudSat is a satellite experiment designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space and, for the first time, will simultaneously observe cloud phase and radiative properties. The primary CloudSat instrument is a 94-GHz, nadir-pointing, Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR). A unique aspect of this mission is the fact that CloudSat is flying in formation with other Earth Sciences missions dubbed the A-Train. 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).
CloudSat must fly a precise orbit to enable the field 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 virtual platform 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.
CIRA provides all of the science data processing support for the mission. Four universities and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) are participants on the CloudSat algorithm development team. During the current Operational (on-orbit) Phase, the DPC is staffed by CIRA employees and part-time CSU or High School students. More information about the DPC can be found at http://www.cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu.
GLOBE
CIRA, in partnership with UCAR, manages the GLOBE web server, real-time data acquisition and visualization, and the central database, along with the Help Desk. The GLOBE program initiated in 1995 has now expanded to over 20,000 schools in 110 countries. GLOBE student measurements are conducted in the areas of Atmosphere, Hydrology, Soil, Land Cover/Biology, and Phenology investigations and now number over 18 million in its database. The GLOBE website is located at: http://www.globe.gov/