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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: TRMM Spacecraft - (Earth's Tropical Rainfall Patterns)

*Have followed this as news items pertaining to it come up from time to time, and decided to create a thread for it.  Will put it in this folder rather than in Unmanned Probes (a lot of traffic there already and IMO that's more for non-Earth related probes and etc.).  Is another NASA success.  :up:

January 5

NASA Extends Mission for Rain-Watching Spacecraft

A trusty NASA satellite that has kept close watch on the Earth's tropical rainfall patterns will continue its mission through 2005, space agency officials said.

NASA agreed to keep the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft alive at the behest of a National Academy of Sciences committee, which strongly recommended the satellite remain operational until decommission was unavoidable, a NASA report said.

Data from the TRMM spacecraft has been used by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other agencies to measure rainfall in tropical regions and develop better storm and rain predictions, as well as weather forecasts.

Originally built for a three-year mission and launched in 1997, the TRMM satellite is already operating well beyond its design lifetime.  In 2000, the spacecraft received a four-year mission extension after which time NASA and its mission partner the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency planned to deorbit the spacecraft.

A second mission extension was granted last fall for NOAA and allowed weather researchers to use the TRMM spacecraft to study the very active hurricane season, researchers said.

SPACE.com Staff

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: TRMM Spacecraft - (Earth's Tropical Rainfall Patterns)

Last year the satelites funding was to be terminated but got a last minute reprieve and now its seems that it will have another. It would seem that it is in the right place at the right time do to all the servere weather and disaster patterns as of late.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: TRMM Spacecraft - (Earth's Tropical Rainfall Patterns)

Well it has been about 6 months since the last update and cash change. Now
NASA Extends TRMM Mission Once Again even with the threat of other missions being cut short.