NASA unveiled two of the six satellites before June 12 that will study the formation and development of tropical cyclones almost every hour – about four to six times more than current satellites. This is the first of three CubeSat launches of the NASA Framework Solution for Storm and Storm Surveillance with Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) equipment. The remaining satellites will be installed on their tracks during two consecutive launches this year. If successful, TROPICS satellites will be deployed in three orbiting planes to cover the earth more frequently.
“TROPICS will provide us with the most common ideas for tropical cyclones, giving us an understanding of their design, durability, and interaction with the environment and providing vital information for storm surveillance and predictability,” said Scott Braun, a research expert at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. , Maryland.
Overall, meteorological satellites currently in low-Earth orbit – such as NOAA-20, NASA’s joint satellite and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Suomi NPP, and others from NASA partners – also visit the storm once every four hours to six. “So we are missing out on a lot of what happens in a storm,” explains Bill Blackwell, TROPICS chief investigator and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. The TROPICS constellation will provide scientists with regular updates, complementing data collected from existing low-Earth satellites and allowing scientists to see each storm from start to finish.
The triple launch will place six satellites in pairs on three slightly different Low-Earth channels, all at an angle close to 30 degrees above the equator. This will increase the time satellites spend in the Earth’s crust where most tropical storms form – a horizontal band stretching from the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States to the southern coast of Australia, about 38 degrees north of the southern hemisphere. Ideally, one of the TROPICS satellites will pass from anywhere within that band about once an hour.
All things – including water vapor, oxygen, and clouds in the atmosphere – emit energy as heat and light, something known as Planck’s Law. Each TROPICS satellite has a device called a microwave radiometer that measures these emissions. Sensors perform idle measurements similar to those made by Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) tools on current low-Earth orbit weather satellites.
The microwave radiometer in the center of each TROPICS satellite measures microwave waves from about 90 to 205 gigahertz. These waves tell scientists about temperature, rainfall, humidity, and other aspects of the storm and the atmosphere. The amount of heat and light – or brightness – in these frequencies comes from different heights, allowing TROPICS satellites to form three-dimensional images of the hurricane area. The frequencies used by TROPICS are also very sensitive to the elements of ice and clouds, which will help meteorologists learn how tropical storms grow and intensify. However, the TROPICS waves are less sensitive to temperature and humidity under the clouds – something ATMS tools ride on NOAA-20 satellites and the leading Suomi-NPP.
Together, data from TROPICS and current weather satellites will help scientists improve their understanding of tropical storms. If all goes according to plan, six TROPICS satellites will join the TROPICS Pathfinder satellite, the CubeSat Proof launched in June 2021. Since then, a traveler has taken photographs of a few tropical storms, such as Hurricane Ida above. United States, Cyclone Batsirai over Madagascar, and Super Typhoon Mindulle in eastern Japan. Satellite acquisition of the route also gave the TROPICS research team the opportunity to fine-tune the satellite software and operating systems before the constellation began. In addition, the path finder has already been rated and will be able to act as a reference on all other TROPICS satellites. That could help TROPICS CubeSats start generating useful data faster.
For more read: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2022/nasa-to-launch-6-small-satellites-to-monitor-study-tropical-cyclones
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