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NASA's Earth Observing System Moves Closer to Launches Satellites and instruments of NASA's Earth Observing System are occupying testing facilities everywhere. Currently, the EOS program has two satellites and two instruments in testing. "These events mark significant milestones in our program and exemplify our relentless efforts to better understand our planet," said Phil Sabelhaus, EOS Program Manager at Goddard. The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) completed thermal-vacuum testing on September 3 at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo. This will be followed by mass properties measurements, a vibration test, and a final round of functional performance tests. ICESat is scheduled to ship to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in late October for preparations for a December launch. ICESat will accurately measure the height of the Earth's polar ice masses, land and ocean surfaces, and clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere using advanced laser technology, star-trackers, and on-board Global Positioning Systems.
The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) completed thermal vacuum testing at Orbital Sciences Corporation on August 27. Currently, the second comprehensive performance testing is being performed and will be followed by mission operations testing and mass properties testing. SORCE is on schedule for shipment to Florida in late October. SORCE specifically addresses long-term climate change, natural variability and enhanced climate prediction, and atmospheric ozone and UV-B radiation. These measurements are critical to studies of the Sun; its effect on our earth system; and its influence on humankind. SORCE is scheduled to launch on a Pegasus rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December 2002. Mission operations for both ICESat and SORCE will be performed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Aura satellite, the sister to Terra and Aqua, recently completed testing on the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS). The Sounder was shipped to Oxford University in the United Kingdom on August 20 for three months of science calibration, after which it will be shipped to the spacecraft contractor, TRW, for integration with the spacecraft bus. The Microwave Limb Sounder and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) are in thermal vacuum testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Once the tests are completed, the instruments will be shipped to the spacecraft contractor for integration. The Ozone Monotoring Instrument (OMI) being built by the Netherland's Agency for Aerospace Programs is in the final stages of science calibration and will be shipped for bus integration in the near future. Aura will study the Earth's ozone, air quality and climate. This mission is designed exclusively to conduct research on the composition, chemistry and dynamics of the Earth's upper and lower atmosphere employing multiple instruments on a single satellite. EOS Aura is the third in a series of major Earth observing satellites to study the environment and climate change. The first and second missions, Terra and Aqua, are designed to study the land, oceans, and the Earth's radiation budget.
The Aqua spacecraft, launched on May 4, has successfully completed its in orbit checkout activities and operations have been transferred from TRW to the Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO) Project. Aqua will collect a large amount of information about the Earth's water cycle, including ocean surface water, evaporations from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. It is anticipated that Aqua will improve our weather forecasting. All of these missions are part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research effort to understand and protect our home planet. Through the study of Earth, NASA will help to provide sound science to policy and economic decision-makers so as to better life here, while developing the technologies needed to explore the universe and search for life beyond our home planet. For more information visit the following websites: http://eos-aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/ http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/
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