NASA testing satellite system in Canada

NASA says its researchers have been in Ontario, Canada, to test equipment on a satellite designed to track snowfall from space. The agency has been testing the equipment aboard a DC-8 aircraft that has flown 13 times over southern Ontario, taking advantage of snow near the Great Lakes to calibrate the system. "Southern Ontario's one of the best places because there's such a variety" of snow types, Joe Munchak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Institute told The Ottawa Citizen. "We were testing out some next-generation radar that will tell you about the size of flakes that are falling and something about the water content as well," Munchak said. NASA has been flying the missions in cooperation with Environment Canada. The equipment being tested will eventually be installed in a satellite for measuring snow and rain called the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, expected to launch in 2014, NASA said.