Ground Test Results of EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar

EarthCARE (Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer) is a satellite mission to observe clouds and aerosols with active and passive sensors for researching cloud and aerosol’s role to earth radiation transfer. It is cooperation mission between Europe and Japan. A flight model of W-band Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) for EarthCARE was assembled and various flight tests have been done in Japan. Unfortunately, malfunction of high voltage power supply for EIK was found in redundant side in last year. It is still needed one more year for repairing. Although CPR/EarthCARE has no redundant high power amplifier yet, it is now transferred to satellite manufacture of ESA　(European Space Agency) in April 2017 to check various interfaces to EathCARE satellite for preparing launch in 2019.

In the flight tests of CPR in Japan, various performance of CPR, such as antenna pattern, transmitter and receiver performance, stability of the phase measurement were obtained. Several ground test results of EarthCARE/CPR will be introduced in this presentation.