# Aqua Teleconference July 6, 2006

**On the phone:**

*Project science*: Claire Parkinson (telecon chair), Steve Platnick,
Steve Graham

*Instruments*: Elena Lobl, Mous Chahine, Tom Pagano, Denis Elliott, Kory
Priestley

*ESMO*: Bill Guit

[]{.mark}

## **Mission Ops (Guit):** see distributed ppt file for details. 

[Highlights of Major Activities for Last Month:]{.underline}

-   6/2: IT security anomaly

-   6/7: MODIS lunar cal #39

-   6/7: Norway communications outage (\~3.7 hrs) for high rate science
    data (i.e., MODIS and AIRS); auto ops would have captured all lost
    data. 7/5: Norway communications outage (\~6.75 hrs) for high rate
    science data; auto ops would have captured all lost data. The
    problem was that a service provider disrupted service on the
    redundant circuit while trouble-shooting a problem on the prime
    circuit. The 6/7 and 7/5 data losses constitute roughly 2/3 of the
    entire Aqua mission data loss. Note that ESMO does not provide these
    communication services.

-   6/14: DMUM #27

######## 

######## Highlight of Planned Activities for This Month

-   7/7: MODIS lunar cal #40

-   7/13-14: Aqua instrument team meetings at JPL

-   7/18-20: Afternoon constellation MOWG at JPL

[Future activities]{.underline}

-   TBD: Aqua Auto-Ops

-   TBD: EEPROM refresh

[Auto-ops]{.underline}

The auto-ops approach provides an automatic way to manage the SSR with
stored commands. With this approach, FOT wouldn't manually go back to
capture science data when a ground station anomaly occurs. Continuing
with auto-ops development. Will run a test next week but should schedule
an operational test (e.g., a few weeks).

CP: Estimate for when auto-ops would go operational? BG: Certainly by
the end of this fiscal year, perhaps in a matter of weeks. But still
need to decide whether it is to be used continuously or as a tool on an
as-needed basis.

[Spacecraft fuel useage]{.underline}: Worst case of 6 years remaining
fuel, but could be many more depending on end-of-mission deactivation
activities. Expecting complete analysis by the end of July.

## Instrument Anomalies (see notes from March telecon for OPEN anomalies)

## Spacecraft Anomalies (see notes from last telecon for OPEN anomalies)

[Spacecraft]{.underline}: status = green

[Instruments]{.underline}: status = green (noting anomalies mentioned
above)

[Data capture/L0 processing]{.underline}: status = green

### **Project Science (Parkinson, Platnick):**

*Parkinson:*

Congratulations to Mous et al. whose paper is highlighted on the cover
of this month's BAMS.

Ramesh called this morning regarding extension of contracts for team
leaders. He talked to Jack Kaye and they are going to exercise the
"4^th^ year" option on the existing contracts. This extension should get
us through the Senior Review. EL: Our 4^th^ year begins this October and
we didn't scope it for full costs. Can we do a new budget? SP: Suggest
getting new budget to Ramesh as soon as possible to get paperwork
moving. TP: AIRS had planned for a 4^th^ year but with a 10% drop in
funding, though it should be ok for us; we won't need to revise our
budget.

The EOS Reference Handbook is at the printers. Hard copies should be
available by the end of July; electronic copies are available now from
the EOS PSO web site.

David Herring, head of Earth Sciences outreach at Goddard, showed CP and
Steve Graham the new NEO (NASA Earth Observations) web site. This site
is complementary to the hugely popular Earth Observatory web site. NEO
centers on providing easily understandable access to NASA data. The site
currently includes selected MODIS and AMSR-E data products, and David is
looking for more Aqua data. CP recommended AIRS temperature and water
vapor products as the highest priority for the next Aqua data inclusion.
TP: Our Level-3 gridded data might be a good match. CP: Contact David
Herring (<dherring@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov>; 301-614-6219) and he'll get
you to the right person. EL: would other data sets from AMSR-E be
desired? CP: Yes, all the easily understandable variables would seem
appropriate, e.g., snow, ice, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture.

Steve Graham and I are working on posters for Angie for the Mission Ops
area. Angie has requested large posters and we don't have high enough
resolution for the images we were going to use. Tom, might you have
high-resolution imagery? TP: we have posters using high-resolution
imagery, I'll send example images of what we have. CP: We have a
precipitation image for AMSR-E. EL: Precipitation is not one of our
standard products. Try a Wentz SST image. CP: We were using
precipitation because it fit with the Atmosphere theme of the poster,
but we can use SST instead and adjust the themes.

**Data system/EOSDIS (Lu):**

No report.

**CERES (Priestley):**

*Highlights from Bruce's email:*

Instruments are nominal (other than FM-4).

CERES will have a special session at the AMS meeting in Madison, WI next
week.

Paper on CERES/MODIS/MISR/ISCCP/SeaWIFS reflected flux comparisons
accepted in J. Climate.

Obtaining excellent agreement between contamination model and Aqua
shortwave (UV) spectral changes. Will be used in Edition 3 reprocessing
(2007).

CERES is still 5% short on FY06 funding from Senior Review plan. Being
worked by Jack Kaye.

NPOESS has plans to purchase the CERES FM-5 instrument (last copy in
storage) for flight on C1 in 2014. Best option to reduce potential data
gap is to get FM-5 on NPP. CP: Also, Passive microwave (CMIS) is not in
the revised NPOESS plans, at least for the first NPOESS satellite. This
increases the importance of continuing the Aqua mission as long as
possible.

**MODIS (Salomonson):**

No report.

**AMSR-E (Lobl):**

Dawn Conway ordered a new Linux system and will be porting all software
to Linux. Will hopefully start reprocessing in September.

Next STM will be September 6-8.

### 

### **AIRS/AMSU (Pagano, Elliott):**

DE: AMSU-A current spike appears to be waning as it did last year. Will
be giving the AIRS talk at IGARSS next month.

TP: Simon Hook is proposing to fly MAS/MASTER and S-HIS on the ER-2 for
AIRS surface emissivity validation. The AIRS team will be providing some
money for this effort. Date will hopefully be sometime this year.

Next STM will be September 26-29 at Greenbelt Marriott.

### **HQ (Kakar):**

No report.

**Outreach, web site, etc. (Graham):**

See "project science" notes.

**Next Telecon:** Since next regularly-scheduled telecon is during the
Denver IGARSS meeting (being attended by Steve P., Steve G., Elena, Roy,
Vince, Denis) and Tom will be away as well, we will re-schedule the
telcon for August 10. Details will be provided.

Minutes are being placed on the following site:
<http://aqua.nasa.gov/minutes>. Corrections/additions can be sent to
Steve Platnick.