NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has launched a series of satellites (called the A-Train) for study of clouds and global climate under NASA Earth Science Enterprise. The 'A-Train' comprises of a series of six satellites flying in a row. These are:

Source: http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/images/atrain.jpg

·         Aqua’ for Global Climate studies especially with respect to water in atmosphere (in Orbit)

·         ‘CloudSat’ for studies on role of Clouds in climate (launched on 28-04-2006)

·         ‘Calipso’ for studies on  role of aerosols & clouds and their interaction

·         ‘Parasol’ for Cloud characterization and distinguishing natural/manmade aerosols (in Orbit)

·         ‘Aura’ for studying the horizontal & vertical distribution of pollutants (in Orbit)

·         OCO’ for Observing CO- (to be launched)

NASA is involving school students for ground truthing of data generated by the  satellites. It has already identified schools from 11 countries (Australia, Cameroon, Canada, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Germany, India, New Zealand, Thailand and US).

  • The Centre took up the initiative to contact NASA and identified eight schools form Punjab, India for participation in its CloudSat Programme under GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations for a Better Environment). The Council with the help of State Institute of Science and Education (SISE), Punjab has identified 2 clusters of schools in Mohali and Jalandhar, however, which are actively participating in the Programme. The list of schools is as under:

Mohali

Jalandhar           

Shastri Model School, Phase I, Near Franco Hotel, Mohali
 

Swami Sant Dass Public School, J.P. Nagar, Jalandhar

Government Model Senior Secondary School, Phase 3BI, Mohali 

Police D.A.V. Public School PAP Campus, Jalandhar
 

 Paragaon Senior Secondary School, Sector 71, Mohali 

Government Girls Senior Secondary School, Nehru Garden, Jalandhar
 

Government Secondary School, Phase-II, Mohali

MGN Public School, Adarsh Nagar, Jalandhar

 

·         The Centre is acting as a facilitator of the Programme with the help of State Institute for Science Education. The Centre sends the dates of CloudSat satellite passover to the Cloud Education Network  Punjab schools. The students with the help of teachers record and report the information related to clouds on CloudSat site, which is further sent to NASA scientists.