Development status of Japanese space-borne cloud profiling radar for EarthCARE mission

Abstract

The EarthCARE mission has been jointly proposed by European and Japanese scientists with the mission objective of improving the understanding of cloud-aerosol-radiation interactions so as to include them correctly and reliably in climate and numerical weather prediction models. This EarthCARE mission has been defined as an international cooperative spacecraft mission between European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for the planned launch year of 2013th. The EarthCARE spacecraft equips four instruments, such as a cloud profiling radar (CPR), an atmospheric backscatter lidar (ATLID), a multi-spectral imager (MSI) and a broadband radiometer (BBR) to perform very accurate synergy observation to observe cloud and aerosol vertical profiles and simultaneous radiative flux at the top of atmosphere. In this cooperation, JAXA is responsible for development of the CPR which will be the first space-borne W-band radar with Doppler measurement capability. JAXA has developed this Doppler radar for several years with Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). The last year, preliminary design was finished and then fabrication and testing have been started. This presentation shows the summary of the CPR preliminary design and reports the test status of the CPR engineering model testing.