The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a new instrument that will measure the character and worldwide distribution of the tiny particles that make up haze, dust, air pollutants, and smoke, will do more than gather data once it’s deployed on the International Space Station this year.

“CATS is a groundbreaking science and technology pathfinder,” said Colleen Hartman, deputy center director for science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Not only will it make critical measurements that will tell us more about the global impact of pollution, smoke and dust on Earth’s climate, it will demonstrate promising new technology and prove that inexpensive missions can make critical measurements needed by the modelers to predict future climate changes.”

Developed by a Goddard team led by scientist Matt McGill, the refrigerator-size CATS will demonstrate for the first time three-wavelength laser technology for measuring volcanic particles and other aerosols from space. It is intended to operate for at least six months and up to three years aboard the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility, augmenting measurements gathered by NASA’s CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) mission.

The big difference between the two, however, is that CALIPSO uses two wavelengths — the 1,064- and 532-nanometer wavelengths — to study the same phenomena.

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Also: Learn about Multi-Parameter Aerosol Scattering Sensor.


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