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The Geostationary Synthetic Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR) is a new Earth remote sensing instrument
concept that has been under development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. First conceived in 1998 as a NASA New
Millennium Program mission and subsequently developed in 2003-2006 as a proof-of-concept prototype under the
NASA Instrument Incubator Program, it is intended to fill a serious gap in our Earth remote sensing capabilities −
namely the lack of a microwave atmospheric sounder in geostationary orbit. The importance of such observations have
been recognized by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, which recently released its report on
a "Decadal Survey" of NASA Earth Science activities. One of the recommended missions for the next decade is a
geostationary microwave sounder. GeoSTAR is well positioned to meet the requirements of such a mission, and because
of the substantial investment NASA has already made in GeoSTAR technology development, this concept is fast
approaching the necessary maturity for implementation in the next decade. NOAA is also keenly interested in GeoSTAR
as a potential payload on its next series of geostationary weather satellites, the GOES-R series. GeoSTAR, with its
ability to map out the three-dimensional structure of temperature, water vapor, clouds, precipitation and convective
parameters on a continual basis, will significantly enhance our ability to observe hurricanes and other severe storms. In
addition, with performance matching that of current and next generation of low-earth-orbiting microwave sounders,
GeoSTAR will also provide observations important to the study of the hydrologic cycle, atmospheric processes and
climate variability and trends. In particular, with GeoSTAR it will be possible to fully resolve the diurnal cycle. We
discuss the GeoSTAR concept and basic design, the performance of the prototype, and a number of science applications
that will be possible with GeoSTAR. The work reported on here was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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