On Saturday, March 8, just after 10 a.m. EST, the second of the two science instruments aboard the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's Core Observatory was activated, and the teams in the mission operations center and launch support room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., began the instrument's checkout period.

DPR functional checkout activities and internal calibrations continued on Sunday and will continue this week and next. DPR data is being sent through the Precipitation Processing System at Goddard to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Mission Operations System (MOS) in Tsukuba, Japan.

The DPR will make detailed three-dimensional measurements of precipitation structures and rates, and with the GPM Core Observatory's expanded coverage, will do so across much more of Earth's surface. The DPR's two frequencies, Ka- and Ku-band, allow measurements of a broader range of precipitation: from frozen precipitation and light rain to heavy rainfall. NEC Toshiba Space Systems Ltd. built the DPR, which was designed by JAXA and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan.