# Aqua Teleconference Sept 4, 2008

**On the phone:**

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

*Instruments*: Vince Salomonson, Jack Xiong, Denis Elliott, Norman Loeb,
Jim Closs, Roy Spencer, Elena Lobl

*ESMO*: Bill Guit, Angie Kelly

*HQ:* Cheryl Yuhas, Ramesh Kakar

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

[Major activities over last month:]{.underline}

-   8/7: AIRS photometric cal

-   8/19: Aqua/Aura flight s/w CCB (need to identify ... )

-   8/26: Science data loss (multiple ground station problems)

-   ongoing: weekly MD/NGST/FOT status meetings, ground system
    modernization plan meetings, GS upgrade status meetings

######## Planned Activities for Next Month

-   9/30: OCO ascent plan peer review meeting at Goddard. Done in the
    past for CloudSat/CALIPSO and will be done for Glory earlier next
    year.

-   NGST SSR recovery telecons: recovery schedule may slip to later this
    year or early next year

## Spacecraft Anomalies

[]{.mark}

-   Solid State Recorder (SSR) anomaly and recovery update: No changes.

## Instrument Anomalies

-   AMSR-E motor current/torque; AMSU-A channel 4 gain changes: No
    changes. EL: Haven't received updated motor current/torque plots.
    AK: Will send update.

[Back-up Control Center Status (BEOC)]{.underline}: status=green. Will
eventually have a back-up

[Debris Collision Avoidance]{.underline}: No significant approaches.

[Spacecraft]{.underline}: status = green

[]{.mark}

[Instruments]{.underline}: status = green

[]{.mark}

[Data capture/L0 processing]{.underline}: Multiple GN contact problems
in Norway (unable to command SKS) on 8/26. Have asked FOT to be more
proactive when an antenna fails to command. Data loss was over northern
Pacific, \~6 minutes, and so no DB fall back.

### 

AK: Will have an A-Train meeting in early October. CY: Have invited
JAXA. AK: GCOM w/AMSR copy would like to join the A-Train.

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

*Parkinson:*

End of Prime Mission Review: Aqua is at the end of its Prime Mission the
end of this month. The CloudSat review was attended by Guit and Platnick
in Seattle on August 22, and organized by . The emphasis was on "lessons
learned".

BG: Ops lessons learned included the added level of effort needed for
formation flying. SP: Science lessons learned included the need to work
toward multi-instrument/multi-platform algorithm synergy from the start
of a project (CloudSat's inclusion of CALIPSO lidar and MODIS). CERES is
another example of incorporating multiple A-Train instruments including
GEO observations.

CY: Objective is to check off on Level-1 requirements, and if they have
not been met then what can we learn from the experience and do better in
the future. Regardless, what are the lessons learned. The meeting was
scheduled following the STM so we didn't need to re-hash the science in
detail. RK: This review was essentially for Volz and Kaye, meaning a
combination of engineering and science is needed.

**Data system/EOSDIS:**

No report.

**CERES (Loeb, Closs):**

The next CERES STM will be Oct 27-31 at GISS. The meeting will be in
collaboration with the GERB (Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget)
science team. Using CERES data, we are working on a paper that discusses
the overlap between successive missions that is needed to be able to
establish trends.

**MODIS (Salomonson, Xiong):**

VS: Instrument and data processing are nominal.

JX: Presented two papers at the CALCON conference (end of August) on
MODIS calibration.

**AMSR-E (Spencer, Lobl):**

RS: Heard that AMSR-E was used to find the eye-wall inside Ike which
they couldn't find in other satellite data. GRL paper on SST AMSR-E
comparisons vs. CERES fluxes; getting interesting results that are at
odds with IPCC climate models.

EL: Updated algorithms are being reprocessed now. Will talk to Ramesh
offline about GCOM AMSR collaboration.

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

CP: Met with Mous and Tom, who were at Goddard on Tuesday. A GRL paper
by Chahine et al. with exciting AIRS CO2 retrievals should be coming out
soon.

DE: Instruments nominal. Several attended the SPIE meeting in San Diego.
I've been analyzing Dome Concordia Station in Antarctica comparisons;
AIRS-IASI agree to within a fraction of a Kelvin but have significant
bias with respect to the weather station on the ground.

[]{.mark}

**HQ (Yuhas, Kakar):**

CY: Current thoughts on the Senior Review schedule is that I will try to
get the call letter out in November, with proposals probably due in
February. But I'm open to suggestions. I'm still struggling with an
efficiency metric that is mandated by OMB. Whatever we come up with has
to be approved by OMB. Perhaps we could have multiple metrics that could
be chosen from. CP: Easiest from our point of view would be to keep the
same Senior Review format as we had last time and then update the text
and imagery.

[]{.mark}

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

NASA EOS PSO is participating in the AARP meeting at the Washington
Convention Center this week (Th-Sa). There are over 25,000 attendees.
NASA directorates/divisions are being represented; NASA is by-far the
largest exhibitor. We have the Magic Planet which includes Aqua content.

**Next Telecon:** Thursday, Oct 2, 2008

Minutes are being placed on the following site:
<http://aqua.nasa.gov/minutes>.