Jun 6 2006
From The Space Library
NASA’s CloudSat meteorological satellite, which had launched on 28 April 2006, began sending early images, indicating that the satellite was observing all types of major cloud systems. CloudSat carried a millimeter wavelength radar called the Cloud-Profiling Radar, a type of radar never used before. Scientists had concluded that the new radar was penetrating through all but the heaviest rainfall. According to CloudSat Deputy Principal Investigator at JPL Deborah Vane, scientists were “no longer looking at clouds like images on a flat piece of paper, but instead [were] peering into clouds and seeing their layered complexity.” CloudSat’s radar had enabled scientists to observe for the first time clouds and snowstorms over the Antarctic, as well as providing new views of sloping, frontal clouds and thunderstorms over Africa, both as individual storms and as part of larger tropical storm systems.
NASA, “First Images from NASA’s CloudSat Have Scientists Sky High,” news release 06-234, 6 June 2006, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jun/HQ_06234_CloudSat_First_Light.html (accessed 22 February 2010).
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