Development Status of the EarthCARE/CPR

The Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission has been jointly proposed by European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese agencies, that is Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). In EarthCARE mission, JAXA and NICT are to provide Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), which is one of the core sensors of the EarthCARE satellite and the first space-borne W-band radar with Doppler measurement mode.

The development of the CPR has required several technical challenges from the point of view of the hardware designing, manufacturing and testing because large reflector, high surface accuracy, high pointing accuracy and high thermal stability were required as the first space-borne W-band Doppler radar. The CFRP flex-core sandwich panel and back rib-less structure were taken for the antenna main reflector in order to minimize the reflector thermal distortions, thermally separated main body structure was selected in order to stabilize the beam pointing, an atomic oxygen tolerant sun shield was investigated in order to protect the feed and outer surfaces of the CPR from the sun illumination, and other lots of efforts were taken for the CPR development.

This presentation will provide the technical summary of the preliminary system design phase including mechanical design, thermal design, test results of the bread-board model and the other technical efforts being taken for the CPR development.