David Steitz
Headquarters, Washington, DC                         August 20, 2001
(Phone: 202/358-0873)

George H. Diller
Kennedy Space Center
(Phone: 321/867-2468)

CONTRACT RELEASE: c01-p

NASA EXERCISES DELTA II CONTRACT OPTION FOR ESSP 3/CLOUDSAT
 
     NASA today announced that it is exercising a contract option 
with the Boeing Co., Huntington Beach, CA, for a Delta II vehicle to 
launch the ESSP 3/CloudSat mission.  The spacecraft are planned for 
launch on April 30, 2004.

This firm-fixed price option is covered under the NASA Med-Lite 
contract awarded to Boeing in 1996. NASA's total launch services 
budget for the  ESSP 3/CloudSat mission is valued at approximately 
$60 million. 

ESSP-3 (formerly Picasso-CENA), the third mission of the NASA Earth 
System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) program, will carry three 
instruments to study clouds and chemicals in the Earth's atmosphere.  
The ESSP-3 satellite flies in formation with the Aqua spacecraft to 
provide a comprehensive global dataset which will greatly improve our 
ability to predict future climate change.

ESSP-3 is a collaboration between NASA's Langley Research Center 
(LaRC), Hampton, VA; the French space agency CNES, Paris; Hampton 
University, Hampton, VA; the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), 
Paris; and Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder, CO.

CloudSat's trio of satellites will be the first spacecraft to study 
clouds on a global basis, contributing to better predictions of 
clouds and their role in climate change. The CloudSat mission is a 
partnership between Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO; 
NASA; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA; the Canadian Space 
Agency, Saint-Hubert; the U.S. Air Force; the U.S. Department of 
Energy; and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, CO.

NASA's ESSP 3/CloudSat Program is managed by the Earth Science 
Enterprise and NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program at NASA 
Headquarters, Washington, D.C., and by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

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