Art Azarbarzin, NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission project manager, and Mashahiro Kojima, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's GPM/DPR project manager, reflect on the long journey the GPM Core Observatory spacecraft has taken to reach its last stop before orbit, the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, from where the mission's Core Observatory is scheduled to launch on the afternoon of Feb. 27, 2014 (EST).

GPM is a joint venture between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The GPM Core Observatory will link data from a constellation of current and planned satellites to produce next-generation global measurements of rainfall and snowfall from space.

The GPM mission is the first coordinated international satellite network to provide near real-time observations of rain and snow every three hours anywhere on the globe. The GPM Core Observatory anchors this network by providing observations on all types of precipitation. The observatory's data acts as the measuring stick by which partner observations can be combined into a unified data set. The data will be used by scientists to study climate change, freshwater resources, floods and droughts, and hurricane formation and tracking.