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.
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GLOBE
CIRA manages the GLOBE web site and database systems, including real-time data acquisition and visualization. The GLOBE program initiated in 1995, now managed by UCAR, has expanded to over 20,000 schools in 110 countries. GLOBE student investigations in Earth system science make use of measurements in the areas of Atmosphere/Climate, Hydrology, Soil, Land Cover/Biology, and Phenology which now number over 20 million student-collected environmental measurements in its database. The GLOBE website is located at: http://www.globe.gov/.