Joint Polar Satellite System: The United States Next Generation Civilian Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (Invited Presentation)

The presentation will begin with remarks on Greg Mandt’s significant contributions to the success of our nation’s polar environmental satellite programs starting with the Defense Military Satellite Program while he was still in the U.S. Air Force.  In the 1990’s, Greg’s leadership as the Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) Program Manager led to the continuity we have today between the legacy POES and the current Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).  The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) is the first of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites launched in October 2011 and will soon be followed by the second in the series, J-1,  being prepared for a January 2017 launch. The suite of five state-of-the-art instruments forming the JPSS baseline are: advanced microwave and infrared sounders which are critical for weather forecasting; a leading-edge visible and infrared imager needed for environmental assessments such as snow/ice cover, droughts, volcanic ash, forest fires and surface temperature; ozone sensor primarily used for global monitoring of ozone and input to weather and climate models; and an earth radiation budget sensor for monitoring the Earth's energy budget.  Another important aspect of JPSS is maintaining international relationships with the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).  JPSS is implemented through a partnership between NOAA and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  NOAA is responsible for overall funding; maintaining the high-level requirements; establishing international and interagency partnerships; developing the science and algorithms; and user engagement. NOAA also provides product data distribution and archiving of JPSS data. NASA's role is to serve as acquisition Center of Excellence, providing acquisition of instruments, spacecraft and the multi-mission ground system, and early mission implementation through turn-over to NOAA for operations.