Nasa’s new micro-satellite constellation to look hurricanes in the eye

Engineers begin construction of the first of eight microsatellites for NASA’s Cyclone… All 8 of them will work together in order to measure ocean floor winds in tandem, while paying close attention to the wall of tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes in the entirety of their life cycle.

CYGNSS or Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System represents a new constellation of satellites that aim to improve forecasting of hurricane by gathering key data on the storm at an interval of every couple of hours.

Hurricane Katrina is an excellent case in point at just how our lack of understanding of hurricanes can prove costly and deadly, as even though forecasters had a good idea of where the storm would hit and its general intensity, the flooding it caused came as a complete surprise, according to a Discovery News report.

The CYGNSS constellation will be deployed in low-Earth orbit on a trajectory that will let each one of the string of satellites to pass over a given area every 12 minutes.

A radar instrument aboard a satellite sent a signal to the ground, and measured the signal strength reflected back to it. Building both sending and receiving capabilities into a single instrument, however, is more expensive than the method being used on CYGNSS, which is being developed by the University of Michigan, whose role includes satellite design and production and science data processing. “We at the moment are within the final part of the mission previous to launch and the start of a brand new period in hurricane observations”.

The Southwest Study Institute in San Antonio is now developing and evaluating the CYGNSS microsatellites and will coordinate the mission operations center at its Boulder, Colorado location.

With CYGNSS, NASA would be able to eliminate much of the uncertainty in predicting the paths of hurricanes and other giant storms. The body of each satellite measures about 20-x-25-x-11 inches and when fully assembled the satellites will each weigh about 64 pounds.

“Its primary objective is to make repeated and quicker measurements of the hurricane – and because it’s (using) Global Positioning System, it will actually see through rain – which is a problem with existing instruments”, Gleason said. With the photo voltaic panels deployed, every microsatellite may have a wingspan of 5.5 ft. The satellites will be stacked for testing early next year.