The NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement mission – part I: New frontiers in precipitation

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory measuring over a mid-latitude storm. The red, white, magenta, maroon and blue lines indicate the flight path, satellite altitude, GPM Microwave Imager swath, Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) Ku-band (KuPR) swath and DPR Ka-band (KaPR) swath, respectively. The rainfall is heaviest where red and lightest where dark blue; 3-dimensional measurements are only available from the DPR segment of the swath. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; adapted from original image.