EarthCARE mission, overview, implementation approach, and development status

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are cooperating to develop the EarthCARE satellite mission with the fundamental objective of improving the understanding of the processes involving clouds, aerosols and radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere. The payload consists of two active and two passive instruments: an ATmospheric LIDar (ATLID), a Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), a Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) and a Broad-Band Radiometer (BBR). The four instruments' data are processed individually and in a synergetic manner to produce a large range of products, which include vertical profiles of aerosols, liquid water and ice, observations of cloud distribution and vertical motion within clouds, and will allow the retrieval of profiles of atmospheric radiative heating and cooling. The presentation will cover the configuration of the satellite with its four instruments, the mission implementation approach, an overview of the ground segment and the overall mission development status. The four instruments performance, based upon currently available analyses and test results will also be briefly addressed with a focus on the ESA instruments.