Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) for the CloudSat Mission

The CloudSat Mission is a new satellite mission currently being developed by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to acquire a global data set of vertical cloud structure and its variability. Such data set will provide crucial input to the studies of radiation budget and water distribution in the atmosphere, and to the numerical weather prediction models. One key science instrument aboard the CloudSat satellite is the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR). CPR is a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. These data will provide an along-track vertical profile of cloud structure. The operational geometry is described. The authors present the system design and the expected performance of this instrument, as well as the state-of-the art millimeter-wave technologies employed by this instrument