CATS ISS deployment

CATS ISS deployment was the operational period of the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) aboard the International Space Station, running from January 2015 to October 2017. CATS launched on SpaceX Dragon CRS-5 on January 10, 2015 and was installed on the Japanese Experiment Module External Facility (JEM-EF) on January 22, 2015. Operated by NASA GSFC, CATS was a multi-wavelength elastic backscatter and high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) designed to profile cloud layers, aerosols, and smoke from the ISS vantage point. It carried three laser wavelengths (1064, 532, and 1064 nm for HSRL mode on Laser 2) and drew on heritage from CALIPSO for retrieval algorithms and calibration methodology. The ISS orbit, at approximately 400-415 km altitude and 51.6 degrees inclination in non-sun-synchronous configuration, gave CATS a wider latitudinal swath than CALIPSO and access to diverse atmospheric regimes for aerosol transport studies. CATS operated until October 30, 2017.^[1][2][3]