"It is very satisfying to have the Terra spacecraft here at Vandenberg ready for launch," said Mike Kavka, Lockheed Martin Terra program manager at Valley Forge. "Our workforce at the Delaware Valley facilities of Missiles & Space have been the premier builders of Earth-remote sensing spacecraft since the very beginning of the Space Age.

"So it is with particular pride that we get ready to launch Terra, the final remote sensing satellite built there. As we consolidate our satellite operations in Sunnyvale, we will not forget the significant role our Delaware Valley employees played in monitoring and mapping our planet," added Kavka.

The launch of Terra will mark the beginning of a comprehensive study of clouds, water vapor, small particles in the atmosphere (called "aerosol" particles), trace gases, land surface and oceanic properties, as well as the interaction between them and their effect on the Earth's energy budget and climate.

Moreover, Terra will observe changes in the Earth's radiation energy budget -- which is the amount of incoming energy from the sun minus outgoing energy from reflected sunlight and emitted heat. If we are to succeed in building predictive computermodels of these complex interactions, we must clearly comprehend global climatic processes and parameters. The Terra team estimates that it will complete the first Earth system models within five years after launch.

Terra is a joint project between the United States, Japan, and Canada. The U.S. provided the spacecraft and three instruments developed by NASA Field Centers -- the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), and the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).

Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. provided two CERES units, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provided MISR, and Goddard Space Flight Center provided the MODIS instrument.

The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry provided the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). The Canadian Space Agency provided an instrument called Measurements of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT).

The spacecraft instruments comprise eight separate sensors with a range of resolutions that will gather data on clouds, aerosols, and the Earth's radiative balance, and measure surface properties and their interaction with the atmosphere:

• CERES, the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System, will measure Earth's radiation budget and atmospheric radiation from the top of the atmosphere using a broadband scanning radiometer with bolometers detectors.
• MISR, the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer, will measures top-of-atmosphere, cloud and surface angular reflectance functions, and measure surface BRDF, aerosol, and vegetation properties using four spectral bands in each of nine imaging cameras oriented at different angles.
• MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-Radiometer, will measure biological and physical processes on land and the ocean using a cross-track scanning multi-spectral radiometer with 36 spectral bands from visible to thermal infrared.
• ASTER, the Advanced Spacebourne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, will provide high-resolution images of the land surface, water, ice, and clouds using three separate sensor subsystems covering 14 multi-spectral bands from visible to thermal infrared.
• MOPITT, the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere, will measure carbon monoxide and methane in the troposphere using correlation spectroscopy with pressure modulated and length modulated gas cells.

They hope to discover the sources and sinks of energy, water, and carbon in the terrestrial biosphere. They want to better understand terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and their links to climate, sea surface temperature and ocean primary productivity.

Terra and subsequent EOS missions form the core of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. The goal of the enterprise is to turn NASA's space-based observing technology and scientific expertise to the study of the planet Earth as an integrated system of land, ocean, atmosphere, ice, and biological processes.

By viewing the Earth from space, scientists can begin to understand how the systems work and how they interact. Questions posed and answers found in this grand scientific inquiry will likely yield knowledge of substantial practical value to society in weather and climate forecasting, in agriculture, in natural resource management, in urban and regional planning, and elsewhere.

Atlas-2 Data Sheet at Space and Tech

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