Note: This detailed CALIPSO Climate Satellite includes an animated solar array deployment.
See preview animation below:
Note: C4D imports Lightwave 3D models directly
The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation CALIPSO satellite provides new insight into the role that clouds and atmospheric aerosols airborne particles play in regulating Earth's weather, climate, and air quality.
CALIPSO combines an active lidar instrument with passive infrared and visible imagers to probe the vertical structure and properties of thin clouds and aerosols over the globe. CALIPSO was launched on April 28, 2006 with the cloud profiling radar system on the CloudSat satellite.
CALIPSO and CloudSat are highly complementary and together provide new, never-before-seen 3-D perspectives of how clouds and aerosols form, evolve, and affect weather and climate. CALIPSO and CloudSat fly in formation with three other satellites in the A-train constellation to enable an even greater understanding of our climate system from the broad array of sensors on these other spacecraft.
Together, the 5 satellites will form the A-Train constellation, a unique space observatory combining a full suite of instruments using all space-based measuring techniques currently available to obtain datasets on clouds, aerosols and the water cycle.
The constellation is so called because the satellites will trail each other like the carriages of a train, some only minutes or seconds apart, with no more than 15 minutes between the first and last.
This observation platform is a world first and an unprecedented opportunity for scientists, who will benefit from a wealth of new information acquired by each satellite and then combined into an exceptionally rich corpus of data.
