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When the Office of Management and Budget released the President’s Fiscal Year 2004 budget plan in early February, we learned that the funding requested for GPM—although it represents a substantial commitment—was less than planned. NASA Headquarters has assured me that GPM remains one of their highest priority missions. NASA is dedicated to using space missions to enhance scientific understanding of Earth’s environment and is placing a particular emphasis on research into climate change. Although the consequences of the 2004 budget plan to the GPM schedule are not completely known yet, the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the GPM Core Spacecraft will likely be rescheduled for some time in calendar year 2004. In addition, we expect this budget change to impact the launch date of the Core Spacecraft, delaying it by approximately one year. GPM team members intend to use this additional time in the Formulation phase to reduce risk, refine designs, consolidate our partnerships, and ensure a highly successful mission confirmation review in 2004. In fact, GPM has attained several landmark achievements in the last few months. We conducted a very effective Spacecraft Concept Review (SCR) of the GPM Core Spacecraft in December 2002. The review team was impressed with the thoroughness and the level of maturity of the Core Spacecraft design—what a wonderful measure of success for our mission! GPM is also stimulating the development and maintenance of important core competencies at GSFC, and inspiring our team to find innovative solutions to problems. For example, an engineer at Goddard has recently developed a new algorithm which will dramatically reduce the time required to determine spacecraft position using Global Positioning System (GPS). We are currently within a week of awarding multiple contracts for performance of an instrument concept and risk reduction study for the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument. Considering that the need to perform these studies was only determined in December 2002, the efficiency with which this Request For Proposal (RFP) was originated, distributed, and evaluated is a credit to our organization. In addition, we are presently working with the Korean government to determine the feasibility of using an existing Korean satellite bus for the GPM Constellation Spacecraft, and making plans to participate in the Third GPM Workshop in The Netherlands in June 2003. Lastly, don’t forget to attend the GPM All Hands Meeting on Tuesday, February 25, at 1:00 p.m. in the GSFC Building 3 Auditorium. All are welcome! Please take time to peruse this issue of The GPM Monitor.
You will find several articles of interest on many of the topics
discussed above, and more. Learn how raindrops form in clouds in
the Science Section, and about how reaction wheels are used to control
spacecraft attitude in the Spacecraft News Section. The Calibration/Validation
Section contains an article describing how scientists will determine
the error and uncertainty associated with GPM measurements, and
an article about Kwajalein—the future location of a GPM Ground
Validation site. Enjoy! Jim Adams GPM Project
Formulation Manager
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