CU TEAM TO BUILD PACKAGE FOR SATELLITE

A $34 million solar instrument package to be built by the University of Colorado at Boulder, considered a crucial tool to help monitor global climate change, has been restored to a U.S. government satellite mission slated for launch in 2013.

The package will be built by CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics for the first flight of the National Polar Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS. The instrument package had been canceled during the 2006 restructuring of the NPOESS program, a joint venture of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Air Force.

Known as the Total Solar Irradiance Sensor, or TSIS, the CU-Boulder package will fly on the first flight of NPOESS in 2013 and is anticipated to fly on two subsequent NPOESS missions slated for 2015 and 2020. The two latter NPOESS missions are expected to bring in an additional $30 million to CU-Boulder, said LASP Senior Researcher and TSIS Project Manager Tom Sparn.

TSIS consists of two instruments, including the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, which measures the total light coming from the sun at all wavelengths, "a fundamental quantity for determining the energy balance of the planet," said TSIS principal investigator Peter Pilewskie of LASP.

The second CU-Boulder instrument, the Spectral Irradiance Monitor, or SIM, will measure how the light from the sun is distributed by wavelength, which is needed to understand how it interacts with Earth's surface and atmosphere, Pilewskie said.

The data from these instruments will help scientists differentiate between natural and human-caused climate change, said Pilewskie.

The project will involve about 30 scientists and engineers at LASP during its peak, as well as 10 additional support personnel from Colorado and about 10 more from outside of Colorado, said Sparn. The mission also will involve about 15 to 20 CU-Boulder undergraduate and graduate students, who will be doing hands-on engineering and data analysis.

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