The Shuttle Atmospheric Lidar Research Program is discussed in relation to an understanding of the processes governing the Earth's atmosphere and in the capacity to evaluate the atmospheric susceptibility to manmade and natural perturbations. Applications discussed are the determination of the global flow of water vapor and pollutants in the troposphere, improvement of chemical and transport models of the stratosphere and mesosphere, evaluation of radiative models of the atmosphere, investigation of chemistry and transport of thermospheric atomic species, and investigation of magnetospheric aspects of sun/weather relationships. The features discussed are the high spatial resolution, control of the source wavelength and intensity, and high measurement specificity.

The Shuttle Small Payloads Symposium is a combined symposia of the Get Away Special (GAS), Hitchhiker, and Complex Autonomous Payloads (CAP) programs, and is proposed to continue as an annual conference. The focus of this conference is to educate potential Space Shuttle Payload Bay users as to the types of carrier systems provided and for current users to share experiment concepts.