NASA Launches JPL-Built Earth Science Experiment
The launch of NASA's newest Earth spacecraft also deployed a small research satellite with a JPL-built experiment that will prove technology for future Earth missions.
An  experiment developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to  test technology for future NASA Earth science missions was aboard one of five small  "CubeSat" research satellites that hitched a ride to orbit Oct. 28 with NASA's  newest Earth-observing satellite, the National Polar-orbiting Operational  Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP.NPP,  which successfully launched aboard a Delta II rocket from California's  Vandenberg Air Force Base, will provide critical data to help scientists  understand the dynamics of long-term climate patterns and help meteorologists  improve short-term weather forecasts. A little more than an hour and a half  after launch, the Delta II deployed the five auxiliary CubeSat payloads, which  are the third installment of a series of NASA Educational Launch of  Nanosatellite missions, also known as ELaNa III.JPL's  experiment is aboard a University of Michigan-created CubeSat called the  Michigan Multipurpose Mini-satellite/CubeSat On-board processing Validation Experiment,  or M-Cubed/COVE. M-Cubed's mission is to obtain mid-resolution color imagery of  Earth's surface and to carry COVE. COVE will validate an image processing  algorithm designed for use in a science instrument planned for a  next-generation satellite mission to survey the impacts of aerosols and clouds  on global climate change. The instrument, called the Multiangle  Spectro-Polarimetric Imager, or MSPI, is a multi-directional, multi-wavelength,  high-accuracy polarization camera system that is a follow-on instrument to the  JPL-developed Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard  NASA's Terra spacecraft. A prototype MSPI camera, known as AirMSPI, flies  aboard NASA's ER-2 high-altitude aircraft and also includes the specialized  processor that is flying aboard COVE. M-Cubed/COVE and MSPI development are  sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office in Washington.MSPI  is a candidate instrument for NASA's Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem (ACE) mission, an  Earth satellite recommended by the National Research Council in its 2007 Earth  Sciences Decadal Survey. ACE mission objectives include characterizing the role  of aerosols in changing Earth's energy balance (the balance between incoming  solar energy and outgoing heat from Earth), especially their impact on  precipitation and cloud formation.The  COVE technology validation experiment, which is designed to last at least six  months, will feature the first in-space application of a new radiation-hardened  field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processor. COVE will advance technology  required for real-time, high-data-rate instrument processing relevant to future  Earth science missions.M-Cubed/COVE successfully deployed from the first of three  Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployers aboard the Delta II rocket, and mission  controllers at the University of Michigan have acquired a signal. The  JPL/Michigan team is now tracking M-Cubed's signal and working to acquire data.  Once nominal CubeSat operations are established, the team will then turn on  JPL's COVE experiment and begin acquiring data from it.For  more information about M-Cubed/COVE, visit:http://umcubed.org/. For more  information about the ELaNa III mission, visit:http://go.nasa.gov/tgbuVn.  For more on AirMSPI, visit:http://airbornescience.jpl.nasa.gov/airmspi/. For more about NPP, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/npp.JPL  is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.