How a single satellite tracks the planet's pulse every three hours
In short: From the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic, monitoring Earth's water and energy cycles requires more than just ground sensors. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission uses an advanced orbital observatory to map rainfall and snowfall worldwide, bridging the data gaps left by oceans and unpopulated regions.
The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission serves as an advanced successor to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), which operated from 1997 until April 2015. While TRMM provided vital three-dimensional views of precipitation, the GPM Core Observatory expands this capability. Built by NASA Goddard, the spacecraft features enhanced channels on its dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) and GPM Microwave Imager (GMI), specifically designed to sense light rain and falling snow.
To capture the complexity of weather systems, the Core Observatory maintains an orbit 253 miles (407 kilometers) above Earth, inclined at 65 degrees to the equator. This specific non-sun-synchronous orbit is critical; it allows the satellite to observe precipitation from the Arctic to the Antarctic at different times of day. This enables scientists to study how storm and weather systems behave differently during day and night, and to track hurricanes and typhoons as they transition from the tropics toward midlatitudes.
The mission is a high-stakes international partnership between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Launched in February 2014 aboard an H-IIA rocket provided by JAXA and managed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., the mission unifies data from an international network of satellites. Data is downlinked via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to the Precipitation Processing Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. To support societal needs like flood and drought prediction, precipitation products are released in near-real time, often just one to five hours after observations are downlinked.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: GPM Mission Briefing
- Also: GPM Science Briefing | NASA Global Precipitation Measurement Mission
- Also: THE GLOBAL PRECIPITATION MEASUREMENT (GPM) MISSION FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY - PMC
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