Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Rani Gran
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-2483
rani.c.gran@nasa.gov

*




RELEASE 13-346
*

*




NASA Delivers Precipitation Satellite to Japan for 2014 Launch
*

/A U.S. Air Force C-5 transport aircraft carrying the Global Precipitation
Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory landed at Kitakyushu Airport in Japan at
approximately 10:30 p.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 23. (Credit: JAXA)/

An international satellite that will set a new standard for global
precipitation measurements from space has completed a 7,300-mile journey from
the United States to Japan, where it now will undergo launch preparations.

A U.S. Air Force C-5 transport aircraft carrying the Global Precipitation
Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory landed at Kitakyushu Airport, about 600
miles southwest of Tokyo, at approximately 10:30 p.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 23.

The spacecraft, the size of a small private jet, is the largest satellite
ever built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It left
Goddard inside a large shipping container Nov. 19 and began its journey
across the Pacific Ocean Nov. 21 from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a
refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska.

From Kitakyushu Airport, the spacecraft was loaded onto a barge heading to
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA's) Tanegashima Space Center on
Tanegashima Island in southern Japan, where it will be prepared for launch in
early 2014 on an H-IIA rocket.

"We have been building GPM hardware at Goddard for over four years," said Art
Azarbarzin, GPM project manager, who traveled with the spacecraft on its
flight to Japan. "We are excited now to get the spacecraft to Tanegashima and
looking forward to the launch."

The satellite is designed to pool together precipitation measurements taken
by a constellation of orbiting U.S. and international partner satellites,
resulting in a single and comprehensive dataset of global precipitation every
three hours.

The satellite will measure rain and snow using two science instruments: the
GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR).
The GMI captures precipitation intensities and horizontal patterns, while the
DPR provides insights into the three-dimensional structure of rain, snow and
other precipitation particles. Together, these two instruments provide a
database of measurements against which other partner satellites' microwave
observations can be meaningfully compared and combined to make a global
precipitation dataset.

The GPM mission is a partnership led by NASA and JAXA. Goddard built and
assembled the satellite. JAXA provided the DPR instrument and launch
services. The Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., built the
GMI under contract to Goddard.

The GPM constellation is a network of satellites from multiple U.S. and
international space agencies, including NASA, JAXA, the U.S. Department of
Defense's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, the U.S. National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration; Japan; the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
in France; the Indian Space Research Organisation; and the European
Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

For more information about the GPM mission, visit:

*http://www.nasa.gov/gpm