CloudSat wins RNASA Stellar Award
On Friday, 25 April 2008, CloudSat received a Rotary National Award for Space Achievement (RNASA) Foundation Stellar Award at the annual RNASA banquet.
Along with the National Space Trophy awarded to Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to stand on the Moon, CloudSat was honored at the banquet for "exceptional achievement by an international joint government, university and industry team in conceiving, designing, developing and launching the CloudSat spacecraft that provides an unprecedented three-dimensional perspective of Earth's clouds to answer questions about how they form, evolve, and affect the weather, climate and fresh water supply."
More information about the RNASA Stellar Award can be found at:
http://www.stellarawards.org/about_rnasa.html
CloudSat is an experimental
satellite that uses radar to observe clouds and
precipitation from space.
CloudSat orbits in formation as part of the
A-Train constellation of satellites
(Aqua,
CloudSat,
CALIPSO,
PARASOL, and
Aura).
Orbital elements (two-line elements or TLEs) for CloudSat are available here (CloudSat DPC). CloudSat ground tracks may be predicted using tools located on this NASA LaRC page. Orbital elements at the LaRC page are updated regularly, but use the DPC link for the very latest TLEs.
For an overview document (PDF) of science and research themes, click here. The BAMS 2002 article (PDF) describing the CloudSat mission is available
here.
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