Organization

General Organization

The overall responsibility of the Mission success—including the costs and the calendar, in accordance to ESSP rules—is the NASA Principal Investigator (PI) responsibility, assisted by French (IPSL) and American (Hampton University) Co-PIs.

The project conduct itself is done by a NASA-CNES integrated project team, the Mission Management Team. This team is responsible for the Mission conduct and the planning from beginning to end, and is the ESSP Project Office interlocutor, in charge of the precursor Earth observation scientific programmes for the NASA.
It is composed of a NASA Project Manager in charge of the entire project, assisted by CNES, Ball, NASA project manager assistants, in coordination with the PI (NASA) and the Co-PIs (IPSL and Hampton University).

The high-level steering is ensured by the Joint Steering Group (JSG) for the Mission direction, and by the Mission Advisory Group (MAP) for the project general progress.

The Mission Advisory Panel (MAP) is in charge of the global supervision. It is composed of the Langley Centre manager, the CNES Orbital Systems manager, the Ball Aerospace vice-president, the IPSL manager, or their representatives, with possible invitation of nominated observers. The MAP will verify the project's progress, check that supply schedules are complied with for the PIs and project managers, and resolve realization conflicts that the project team could not solve.

The Joint Steering Group's role is to define the main project "programmatic" orientations or re-orientations. It can also make decisions to solve issues that MAP could not solve. It is composed of an equal number of representatives nominated by each party, it will be co-chaired by the Administrator associated for Earth Sciences, of NASA, CNES's Assistant Manager for Earth Sciences, and will include INSU's manager. This comity will meet upon demand of one of them.

As to scientific steering, all Principal Investigators are grouped in a Science Team. This group is managed by scientific project manager D. Winker (NASA) assisted by his two Co-Investigators, P. Mc Cormick (Univ. Hampton) and J. Pelon (IPSL). He contributes to the definition of the mission's scientific aspects.

Finally, an international group of scientists, the International Science Advisory Panel (ISAP), makes an independent evaluation of the scientific objectives, the scientific progress obtained, and contributes to spreading such progress in an international context.