GIFTS Mission

Teaming Opportunity for Geostationary Imaging Development - NASA
Commerce Business Daily Issue, July 1, 1999 PSA#2379
NASA/Langley Research Center

The LaRC is currently conducting a study and preparing a proposal for a Geostationary Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) mission to be operational in early 2003. The study, sponsored by NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP), was awarded as a result of a NASA Research Announcement, NRA-98-OES-12, for New Millennium program measurement concepts. The LaRC is seeking team members to participate with NASA LaRC in developing the proposal and implementing a mission to validate the GIFTS measurement concept and associated technologies. The NASA NMP is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to identify, flight validate, and infuse key advanced technologies and capabilities needed to enable 21st century NASA space and earth science missions. The Program focuses on technology validation in a systems and subsystems approach to retire risk for the first use of such technology in a science mission. The GIFTS measurement concept will improve observation of all three basic atmospheric state variables (temperature, moisture, and wind velocity) thereby allowing much higher spatial, vertical, and temporal resolutions than is currently achievable ...