Abstract
The concept of Tropical Rain fall Measuring Mission (TRMM) originates back in mid 1980's. After longer than 10 years of development by NASA, Communication Research Laboratory (CRL) and NASDA (National Space Development Agency of Japan), it was successfully launched in 1997. TRMM is now operating. For better understanding of the whole TRMM program, we introduce TRMM program. Topics cover as follows ; historical background, observing and scientific objectives, measuring precipitation by space remote-sensing, mission profile of TRMM satellite, raison d'être in the wide range of Earth Observing satellites worldwide, validation of precipitation, scientific research plan and the future follow-on mission. TRMM is a new Earth observing satellite and very different from LANDSAT, SPOT, NOAA, NASDA's MOS-1, JERS-1 or ADEOS. Through this introduction, the author hopes the maximum exploitation of TRMM data.
