The EarthCARE mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for the study of the role of clouds and aerosols has been recently launched onboard Falcon 9 of Space X from the Vandenberg site in California.
Considering the alarm concerning the planet Earth due to the impact that climate change could have on human beings, the mission will help understand the role of clouds and aerosols in reflected solar radiation incident in space and respond to cooling and heating effects on our planet. Clouds do play a crucial role in the Earth’s climate system by reflecting sunlight in space, called albedo effect, and trapping the heat irradiated b the Earth’s surface, which is part of the greenhouse effect.
The EarthCARE mission, designed to shed new light on this important scientific area, will be able to improve the accuracy of climate models to support qualitative weather forecasting. The mission will carry a cutting-edge equipment onboard, which was developed with contribution of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Leonard that has implemented a sophisticated laser transmitter between Pomezia (Rome) and Campi Bisenzio (Florence) integrated in the ATLID – Atmospheric Lidar instrument. This instrument will be able to observe and collect very small – less than one thousandth of a millimetre in size – particle data from aerosols and clouds. Moreover, Leonardo has developed the satellite photovoltaic panels and a power transmitter for the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) instrument developed by JAXA, in their plant near Milan.
