EarthCARE

EarthCARE (Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) is the sixth Earth Explorer mission in ESA's Living Planet Programme, developed jointly with JAXA. Its four instruments - an atmospheric lidar (ATLID), a Doppler cloud profiling radar (CPR, contributed by JAXA), a multi-spectral imager (MSI), and a broadband radiometer (BBR) - measure the vertical distribution of clouds, aerosols, and precipitation alongside Earth's radiative energy balance, to improve cloud representation in weather and climate models.

EarthCARE was originally manifested on Soyuz; it transferred to Vega-C after Russia's invasion of Ukraine suspended cooperation, then moved again to Falcon 9 following the VV22 failure in December 2022.