GIFTS Milestones

1995 NASA establishes the New Millennium Program

12 April 1999 GIFTS announced as a part of Earth Observing 3

December 1999 NASA names SSEC a key partner to help design and build GIFTS

2 February 2000 GIFTS Concept Review

9-12 October 2000 Revercomb, Best, and Smith present the GIFTS sensor concept at an SPIE meeting in Sendai, Japan

10 April 2001 Revercomb gives public talk about GIFTS at UW Space Place

1 November 2002 version of the GIFTS clear-sky fast model released

28-29 May 2003 UW-Madison hosts the 3rd Annual Workshop on Hyperspectral Meteorological Science of UW, MURI and Beyond

June 2003 Initial beta release of GIFTS fast cloudy forward model

April 2004 SSEC receives Defense University Research Instrument Program grant to fund increase in computer power for GIFTS research

27-28 April 2004 UW-Madison hosts the 4th Annual Workshop on Hyperspectral Science of UW-Madison, MURI, GIFTS and GOES-R

4-6 May 2004 GIFTS Critical Design Review

May 2005 SSEC delivers a fully tested, calibrated engineering model version of the on-board calibration system for the GIFTS EDU

December 2005 Release of 2-stage GIFTS Information Processing System (GIPS) software package

January 2006 Weather and Research Forecasting model used to generate a simulated atmospheric profile 24-hour dataset that provided the necessary input for the GIFTS forward RTM

Early 2006 GIFTS EDU thermal vacuum testing at USU SDL, Logan Utah

April 2006 Release of 4-stage GIPS software package

6-30 September 2006 Uplooking Sky validation of GIFTS Engineering Development Unit using UW-SSEC AERIBAGO research vehicle, Logan Utah

December 2006 Formal Contract Termination