In 2006, NASA and French Space Agency CNES launched a satellite in a joint mission to probe the properties of Earth's thin clouds and aerosols . The mission was called the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation, or CALIPSO. It was developed to study the vertical structure of clouds and atmospheric aerosols around Earth. CALIPSO worked with CloudSat and flew as part of the A-Train satellite constellation. The mission was designed to last three years but continued science operations for more than 17 years. It ended its science mission on August 1, 2023.
