A series of Earth-observing satellites operated by NASA and other national space agencies. All the satellites are in polar orbit and they cross the equator at about 13.30 local time, within seconds or minutes of each other. There are six satellites in the train: Aqua, Aura, CALIPSO, and CloudSat, GCOM-W1 “SHIZUKU”, and OCO-2. A seventh satellite, Glory, was lost due to a launch failure on 4 March 2011. PARASOL was part of the A-train from 2004 until 2009.
http://atrain.nasa.gov/ A NASA mission of several satellites placed in polar orbit to study Earth-system science.