December 2013: The PARASOL mission ended after more than 8 years of service
These images are the last taken by PARASOL in natural (left) and polarized light (right) above the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The PARASOL mission ended on December 18, 2013, exactly 9 years after it was launched on December 18, 2004. The PARASOL scientific mission started on March 12, 2005 after a 3-month commissioning phase. In December 2009, PARASOL left the A-train orbit but kept acquiring observations in science mode while slowly drifting toward later overpass times. The science mission ended on October 11, 2013, when the decommissioning phase begun. The satellite was shut down permanently on December 18, 2013.
The PARASOL mission is a success in demonstrating the usefulness of directional polarized measurements. Scientists now have to be patient and wait several years for polarization or directional measurements, until the 3MI mission onboard EPS-SG takes over.
The full archive of PARASOL observations will be reprocessed in 2014
and the latest version of all products will be available at the ICARE
Data and Services Center.
