The Verge
These little satellites could bring big advances to tropical storm forecasts
Hurricane Ida is seen in an image taken aboard the International Space Station in August 2021. | Image: European Space Agency via NASA
NASA is gearing up to launch tiny satellites into space that will help forecasters keep a closer eye on tropical storms as they develop in a mission called TROPICS. Crucially, if the launches are successful, the satellites will mark a big advancement in our ability to watch rapidly intensifying storms.
At the moment, NASA’s weather satellites can only check in on a storm every four to six hours. “So we’re missing a lot of what’s happening in the storm,” Bill Blackwell, principal investigator for the TROPICS mission and a researcher at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, said in NASA’s announcement yesterday.
Image: NASA/NOAA
Images taken from current weather satellites. Both the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder...