Weather Satellite to Set New Global Standard for Precipitation Measurements

Saturday Japan received a state-of-the-art weather satellite anticipated to set the new global standard for precipitation measurements from space, NASA reported Monday.

Once operational, the satellite will act as an information node, pooling precipitation measurement data taken from other orbiting satellites operated by the US and its partner nations, rendering a single global report with comprehensive data sets every three hours.

The satellite, known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, traveled aboard a US Air Force C-5 transport aircraft from an air force base in Maryland to Kitakyushu Airport, approximately 600 miles southwest of Tokyo. It was then loaded onto a barge and transported to a JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, facility on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan. Launch is anticipated to take place in early 2014.

The journey spanned 7,300 miles including a stop in Anchorage, Alaska for refueling.

NASA said the spacecraft, about about the size of a small private jet, is the largest to ever be build in its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"We have been building GPM hardware at Goddard for over four years," Art Azarbarzin, GPM project manager, said in a statement. "We are excited now to get the spacecraft to Tanegashima and looking forward to the launch."

The spacecraft will use special radar and microwave detectors to measure rain and snow. An instrument called the GPM Microwave Imager will measure precipitation intensities and horizontal patterns, while another, the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar, will process 3-D renderings of the structure of rain, snow and other precipitation particles.

The data taken by the two instruments can be compared to data collected by partner satellites to create global precipitation datasets, NASA said.