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EarthCARE is the sixth Earth Explorer mission of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Living Planet Program. It is being developed in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It has the fundamental objective of improving understanding of the processes involving clouds, aerosols and radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The payload of EarthCARE consists of two active and two passive instruments. ESA is developing three of the instruments, an ATmospheric LIDar (ATLID), a Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) and a Broad-Band Radiometer (BBR). JAXA is developing the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR).
The four instruments will provide co-located data from a single platform, which may be processed individually and in a synergistic manner, to provide a range of products, such as the vertical structure of aerosols and clouds, the corresponding broad-band and narrow-band radiances at the top of the atmosphere, and complementary information for scene identification.
ATLID is a backscatter LIDAR, operating at a wavelength of 355 nm, that will record atmospheric echoes from an altitude of 40 km to ground. It incorporates a high resolution spectral filter, which enables the relative separation of aerosol and molecular backscatter. It also measures cross and co-polar components of the Mie backscatter on separate channels. The BBR instrument will make separate measurements of reflected solar radiation and radiated thermal emission from the scene. The MSI instrument will make measurements in seven bands ranging from the visible spectrum, near infrared, short wave infrared, down to thermal infrared, across a 150 km swath. This will aid in scene identification and provide some aerosol information.
This paper will provide an overview of the design and function of the instruments and a description of the current progress achieved in their integration and characterization.
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