NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) received a reprieve in September when the agency decided to continue the mission until at least fiscal year 2009 and possibly until 2012. Earlier agency plans had called for discontinuing TRMM this year while the satellite still had enough fuel for a controlled re‐entry.Despite the TRMM reprieve, however, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is already preparing for TRMM's replacement, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission.