{"id":69470,"date":"2016-11-11T23:27:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T15:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-sets-launch-date-for-first-smallsat-constellation\/"},"modified":"2016-11-11T23:27:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T15:27:18","slug":"nasa-sets-launch-date-for-first-smallsat-constellation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-sets-launch-date-for-first-smallsat-constellation\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Sets Launch Date for First Smallsat Constellation"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>[Via Satellite 10-11-2016] <strong>NASA<\/strong> is set to launch its first Earth science small satellite constellation, which will help improve hurricane intensity, track, and storm-surge forecasts, on Dec. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) hurricane mission will measure previously unknown details crucial to accurately understanding the formation and intensity of tropical cyclones and hurricanes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a constellation of eight spacecraft, CYGNSS will do what a single craft can\u2019t in terms of measuring surface wind speeds inside hurricanes and tropical cyclones at high time-resolution, to improve our ability to understand and predict how these deadly storms develop,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate at the agency\u2019s headquarters in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p>NASA expects the CYGNSS mission to lead to more accurate weather forecasts of wind speeds and storm surges \u2014 the walls of water that do the most damage when hurricanes make landfall.<\/p>\n<p>Using the same GPS technology that allows drivers to navigate streets, CYGNSS will use a constellation of eight microsatellite observatories to measure the surface roughness of the world\u2019s oceans. Mission scientists will use the data collected to calculate surface wind speeds, providing a better picture of a storm\u2019s strength and intensity. Unlike existing operational weather satellites, CYGNSS can penetrate the heavy rain of a hurricane\u2019s eyewall to gather data about a storm\u2019s intense inner core.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, we can\u2019t see what\u2019s happening under the rain,\u201d said Chris Ruf, professor at the <strong>University of Michigan<\/strong>\u2018s Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering and principal investigator for the CYGNSS mission. \u201cWe can measure the wind outside of the storm cell with present systems. But there\u2019s a gap in our knowledge of cyclone processes in the critical eyewall region of the storm \u2014 a gap that will be filled by the CYGNSS data. The models try to predict what is happening under the rain, but they are much less accurate without continuous experimental validation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CYGNSS small satellite observatories will continuously monitor surface winds over the oceans across Earth\u2019s tropical hurricane-belt latitudes. Each satellite is capable of capturing four wind measurements per second, adding as much as 32 wind measurements per second for the entire constellation.<\/p>\n<p>CYGNSS is the first complete orbital mission competitively selected by NASA\u2019s Earth Venture program, which focuses on low-cost, rapidly developed, science-driven missions to enhance our understanding of the current state of Earth and its complex, dynamic system and enable continual improvement in the prediction of future changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Via Satellite 10-11-2016] NASA is set to launch its first Earth science small satellite constellation, which will help improve hurricane intensity, track, and storm-surge forecasts, on Dec. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) hurricane mission will measure previously unknown details crucial to accurately understanding the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}