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Earth Gauge: Glory

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By Nick Piesco - email

NASA's Glory satellite was scheduled to launch this week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but problems with the rocket have delayed the launch until mid-March. When it does launch, the Glory mission will collect data to help scientists better understand how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles, or aerosols, affect Earth's climate. Among other things, better understanding of these aspects of climate will help develop more accurate global and regional climate models.

Glory's Instruments:

  • Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM): The TIM will measure the amount of solar energy entering the Earth's atmosphere to help scientists understand any long-term changes in the amount of energy coming from the Sun and how those changes affect Earth's climate.
  • Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS): The APS will measure various features of aerosols – size, quantity, shape and refractive index (a measure of the speed of light in a substance).
  • Glory also has two cloud-identifying Cloud Cameras on-board. Combined with data from the APS, these will help scientists determine global distribution of aerosols and properties of clouds with high accuracy.

Learn more about the Glory Mission: glory.gsfc.nasa.gov.

View and download images of Glory: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Glory/multimedia/gallery/gallery-index.html.

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