MISSION UPDATE 6/16/2015:
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, was launched in 1997 to study rainfall for weather and climate research. After over 17 years of productive data gathering, the instruments on TRMM were turned off on April 8. The spacecraft re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on June 15, 2015, at 11:55 p.m. EDT, over the South Indian Ocean, according to the U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Space through the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), and most of the spacecraft was expected to burn up in the atmosphere during its uncontrolled re-entry.
The multi-satellite 3B42*/TMPA product will continue to be produced through early 2018 - learn more about the transition from 3B42* to IMERG.
TRMM was a research satellite designed to improve our understanding of the distribution and variability of precipitation within the tropics as part of the water cycle in the current climate system. By covering the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Earth, TRMM provided much needed information on rainfall and its associated heat release that helps to power the global atmospheric circulation that shapes both weather and climate. In coordination with other satellites in NASA's Earth Observing System, TRMM provided important precipitation information using several space-borne instruments to increase our understanding of the interactions between water vapor, clouds, and precipitation, that are central to regulating Earth's climate.
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