Positive response of the LOS bureau for CALIPSO mission extension.

A-TRAIN operational coordination meeting (MOWG) in Biarritz, France.

This year, CNES hosted the A-Train constellation MOWG meeting. During this MOWG, the possible return of Cloudsat satellite into the A-Train constellation was largely discussed, notably the eventual impacts on CALIPSO mission exploitation. A process describing the main steps to make the analysis of this return have been setup as well as formal decision reviews.

5th CALIPSO Exploitation Review in Biarritz, France.

This 5th REVEX allowed to note the very good functioning of the satellite and the Ground Segment as well as to note the exploitation extension until the end of 2013.

NASA confirms CALIPSO mission 2 years extension

CNES and NASA wished to continue their cooperation relative to CALIPSO mission exploitation and confirmed the mission extension by 2 additional years (2012-2013).

Signature of the new Implementing Arrangement (IA) between CNES and NASA.

This new IA signed between CNES and NASA allows the continuation of the cooperation between the 2 agencies to continue CALIPSO mission. It replaces the MOU signed on June 18, 2003 which was coming to its end.

Mission Extension Review Steering Committee (REDEM).

The REDEM Steering Committee gave a favourable answer to the CALIPSO mission 2 years extension (2012-2013). At the same time, a senior review process is on going on NASA side and an answer will be given by the end of August, 2011 about the CALIPSO mission extension. On CNES side, a new position of the LOS bureau is expected to ratify this extension.

Mission Extension Review (REDEM).

End 2010, the scientific community asked for a 2 years extension of CALIPSO mission. CNES instructed this request and presented the results during the REDEM on April 4, 2011. Since the application of the "Loi d'Opérations Spatiales" (LOS: Space Operations Law) in December 2010, a mission exploitation extension must respect as much as possible the criteria defined by the new law and the advices emitted by the LOS bureau.

International Symposium on the A-Train Satellite Constellation 2010, New Orleans, USA

The International Symposium on the A-Train Satellite Constellation 2010 follows and expands on the first A-Train Symposium held in Lille, France in 2007. It aims to provide a forum to exchange information on the latest scientific advancements using multisensor measurements from the A-Train. An additional objective of the Symposium is to better inform new and present users on recent enhancements to A-Train data sets and subtleties related to their use. Because the instruments employ different measurement techniques, fusing the observations and/or data products is often challenging. Consequently, another important objective is to highlight key issues and strategies for combining the diverse measurements.

More information...

New version (3.01) of CALIPSO Scientific Products

The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite mission is pleased to announce the immediate public release of its version 3.01 cloud and aerosol data products. The new release includes all Level 1 and Level 2 products derived from the Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) measurements. At present, no new data products are being released for the Imaging Infrared Radiometer (IIR) and the Wide Field Camera (WFC).

The quality and quantity of the information provided in the CALIOP version 3 data products are substantially improved over previous releases. These improvements are attributed to a number of factors, including significant enhancements to the daytime calibration procedures; incorporation of advanced probability distribution functions for more reliable separation of clouds and aerosols; implementation of a new algorithm for determining cloud thermodynamic phase; refinements to layer base detection for boundary layer aerosols; and several important corrections to the CALIOP extinction retrieval code. Data usability is greatly enhanced by the addition of numerous diagnostic and quality assurance parameters. In addition, several new optical parameters (e.g., ice-water content/path and particulate depolarization ratios) have been added to the Level 2 products, and range-resolved uncertainty estimates are now provided for all optical profile data. The organization of the CALIOP version 3 profile products has changed also significantly. In particular, the aerosol profile products have been completely restructured, and now are reported on the same spatial grid as the cloud profile products. The horizontal resolution of the cloud and aerosol profile products is now identical to the horizontal resolution of the 5-km cloud and aerosol layer products, thus enabling unambiguous identification of the profile data associated with each layer reported in the 5-km layer products.

The CALIOP version 3.01 data products are presently available for 2006 and 2007 at the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) (http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov). These products will also be soon available at the ICARE data center in France (http://www.icare.univ-lille1.fr).
Additional data for 2008-2010 will be posted at both facilities as they are processed over the next few weeks.

Fourth year in orbit for CALIPSO on April 28, 2010.

Since the laser switch in March 2009, the mission continues nominaly and the laser performances are excellent.

Calipso observes the ashes plume above France on April 17th, 2010 - © NASA

CALIPSO mission initialy scheduled for 3 years has been extended by 2 years (2010-2011). For all the teams that contributed or still contribute to the success of this mission, it is a great happiness and a huge success.

Third anniversary in orbit for CALIPSO on April 28th. It begun its fourth year notably thanks to its second laser!

Complete success for the CALIPSO laser switch campaign

The laser switch campaign initially scheduled from 24/02/2009 to 18/03/2009 has been postponed from 6/3/2009 to 19/3/2009 after the anomaly of the 16/02/2009 on laser 2. The laser 1 switch operations have been done in close cooperation with LARC and enabled a nominal restart of the mission on 17/03/2009. Laser 2 has been definitively stopped on 06/03/2009.

Complete text of the NASA-CNES joint press release.

CALIPSO in the press interview of the CoPI of the mission (in french).

2nd CALIPSO Exploitation Review on October 6 and 7, followed by the A-TRAIN operational coordination meeting (MOWG) on October 8, 9 and 10 in Norfolk, Virginia (USA).

Second anniversary in orbit for CALIPSO!

CALIPSO level 2 Lidar products are available at ASDC (Atmospheric Science Data Center) and include the extinction and backscattering optical properties of clouds and aerosols, cloud phases (ice, liquid) as well as aerosol types. These products have begun to be distributed on 28/01/08 and the data reprocessings since June 13th, 2006 are already available.

Since November 28, 2007 19:24:20 UTC, Calipso has definitively changed its tilt (pitch from 0,3° to 3°) following tests performed from November 6 to 15, 2006 and from August 21 to September 7 2007.
To insure the best possible footpring overlap, Cloudsat has modified its position with respect to Calipso by moving 5 secondes away ahead of Calipso.
New A-Train phasing

An "A-Train Lille Symposium 2007" was held in Lille - Grand-Palais - from October 22 to 25, 2007.
The goal of this international meeting was: "Bringing together A-train observations and modelling to understand aerosols and clouds"

Examples of level 1 qualified products from the Infrared Imager.

The level 1 processing combines rough measurements of the IIR with, on the one hand, calibration data and, on the other hand, measurements of attitude and navigation of the CALIPSO platform. The outputs of this processing consist in files of radiances, directly usable by the scientific community. The quality of level 1 products has been optimized during the assessment phase: cancellation of the image of the moon in the deep space views, accurate location of the IIR images, correction of the normalization of the spectral responses of the IIR channels. Level 1 images have been centered on the lidar track on the Earth. Here are some examples.

Public release of CALIPSO Data Products

The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite mission has started the distribution of its data products. This data release consists of data beginning in mid June 2006 and includes Level 1 radiances from each of the instruments. This release also includes the lidar Level 2 vertical feature mask and cloud and aerosol layer products. The CALIPSO data are available through the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) at NASA Langley Research Center and can be accessed at the following URL:
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/calipso/table_calipso.html