EarthCARE Mission Status

The Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission, a collaborative effort between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), aims to address critical uncertainties in climate predictions related to cloud-aerosol interactions and their effects on solar and thermal radiation.

Launched in May 2024, EarthCARE has been in orbit for almost two years, providing invaluable data to the scientific community. EarthCARE's payload includes two active instruments, the cloud-aerosol lidar (ATLID) and the cloud Doppler radar (CPR), along with the passive multispectral imager (MSI) and broad-band radiometer (BBR). These instruments work synergistically to deliver vertical profiles of cloud ice and liquid water, aerosol types, precipitation, and heating rates. Additionally, they measure solar and thermal top-of-atmosphere radiances, aiming to reconstruct top-of-the-atmosphere short- and longwave fluxes with an accuracy of 10 Wm-2 on a 10 km x 10 km scene. The mission has successfully developed and disseminated data products through a coordinated approach between ESA and JAXA, ensuring continuous information exchange between European and Japanese algorithm and science teams. EarthCARE data is freely available to the scientific community, with all products available to the public, including three- and four-sensor Level-2b synergistic data.

This presentation gives the EarthCARE mission status after almost 2 years in orbit. It will cover the status of all mission elements, including instruments, platform and ground segments. In addition highlight results from the mission will be shown, together with an outlook on future activities.