1- 1Department of Health Sciences, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy (digirolamo@unibas.it)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
LUCE, formerly Cloud and Aerosol Lidar for Global Scale Observations of the Ocean-Land-Atmosphere System (CALIGOLA), is an advanced multi-disciplinary space lidar mission for Earth Sciences, primarily focusing on the observation of the atmosphere and oceans, aimed at advancing global knowledge on the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system. It is the first spaceborne Raman-elastic-fluorescence lidar, created through an Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) partnership. This mission has been conceived with the aim to provide the international scientific community with an unprecedented dataset of geophysical parameters capable to increase scientific knowledge in the areas of atmospheric, aquatic, terrestrial, cryospheric and hydrological sciences. The mission is planned to be launched in the time frame 2035-2037, with an expected lifetime of 3-5 years. This conference contribution aims at providing an overview of the different mission scientific objectives, with a primary focus on atmospheric and ocean sciences, and a preliminary assessment of the expected system performance in a variety of environmental scenarios.
Paolo Di Girolamo(a), Davide Dionisi(b), Marco Di Paolantonio(b), Donato Summa(c), Simone Lolli(c), Giuseppe D’Amico(c), Lucia Mona(c), Rosalia Santoleri(b), Valentina Raimondi, Simona Zoffoli(e), Francesco Tataranni(e), Sara Venafra(e), Marianna Rinaldi(e), Matteo Picchiani(e), Giorgio Viavattene(e), Raffaele Votta(e), Francesco Longo(e), Valentina Sacchieri(f), Francesco Coppola(f), Pasquale Ferrara(f), Alberto Cosentino(f), Charles R. Trepte(g), Chris A. Hostetler(g), Tyler Thorsen(g), John Smith(g), Salvatore Scola(g), Brian Getzewich(g), Yongxiang Hu(g), Michael J. Behrenfeld(h), Scott Braun(i), Bob Holz(l), Gerald “Jay” Mace(m), Laura Lorenzoni(n), Jennifer Johnson(o), Daugherty, Kevin(f), Andrea Di Ruscio(p), Rachele Merigiolla(p), Marco Grottadaurea(p), Barbara Bussi(p), Francesco Zagami(p) (a) Department of Health Sciences, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy (b) Institute of Marine Sciences, Italian National Research Council, 00133 Rome, Italy (c) Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, Italian National Research Council, 85050 Tito Scalo (PZ), Italy (d) Institute of Applied Physics, Italian National Research Council, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy (e) Italian Space Agency, 00133 Rome, Italy (f) Leonardo S.p.A, Italy (g) NASA Langley Research Center, MS 475, Hampton, VA, USA (h) Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA (i) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA (l) University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison (m) University of Utah, (n) NASA Head Quarters, DK000, Washington, MD, USA (o) University of Kansas (p) TAS-I, Thales Alenia space Italy
How to cite: Di Girolamo, P. and the LUCE: The space lidar mission LUCE: a multi-disciplinary observatory for Earth Sciences, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5843, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5843, 2026.
