| On November 30 and December 1, 2005, representatives from NASA and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) assembled for the first NASA/AEB GPM Technical Group Meeting. The gathering convened at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil. AEB plans to establish a Brazilian GPM Mission that may include a spacecraft with a microwave precipitation measurement instrument as well as a ground system, a Ground Validation (GV) program, and a data archive and distribution system. The potential spacecraft will fly in a low inclination orbit—similar to that of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)—to take observations over tropical areas. The microwave instrument will be akin to the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) slated to fly on the GPM Core Spacecraft. The Brazilian spacecraft will serve as a constellation satellite for GPM, and the Brazilian GV program will complement the global GPM GV system by examining retrieval algorithms specifically related to tropical rainfall. The Brazilian data processing, archive, and distribution system will serve as a data center for South American GPM data users. NASA and AEB are in the process of developing a formal document (e.g., a Memorandum of Understanding) to formally establish a GPM partnership. AEB plans to host the next GPM International Ground Validation Workshop in 2007. |