NASA plans a launch as early as Oct. 26 of two more "cars" in the orbiting "A-train," a close formation of Earth-observing spacecraft that deliver complementary measurements of the same environmental phenomena. The two new satellites—CloudSat and Calipso (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations)—will track only 15 sec. apart on the 483-mi. circular Sun-synchronous A-train orbit. That will allow them to study the same column of atmosphere with different instruments. The $200-million CloudSat will come first in the sequence, trailing NASA's Aqua water-measurement satellite by 30-120 sec. to complement its measurements as well. Built by Ball Aerospace for NASA with a key component supplied by the Canadian Space Agency, the satellite carries the first space-borne millimeter wavelength radar for cloud profiling, a 94GHz. unit that gives a vertical resolution of 500 meters. A science team headed by Colorado State University will use the data to measure the amount and size of liquid water drops and ice particles in clouds.
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