NASA wybrała cztery projekty małych satelitów do testowania nowych technologii użytecznych do badania Ziemi :
CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation
(CubeRRT) - Joel Johnson of Ohio State University will lead the development of CubeRRT, a project to observe, detect and mitigate radio frequency interference (RFI) for microwave radiometers, an instrument that measures Earth's properties, including atmospheric water vapor or soil moisture. RFI is a growing problem in radiometry due to increasing demand for use on the spectrum for communications. If successful, CubeRRT technologies will address gaps in existing RFI mitigation technologies to increase the amount of high quality radiometer data collected by future Earth-observing missions.
Compact Infrared Radiometer in Space (CIRiS) - CIRiS, led by David Osterman of Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, will adapt an existing instrument to be CubeSat-compatible to validate instrument performance in low-Earth orbit. The CIRiS mission will also validate data-processing algorithms as well as on-orbit instrument calibration - important for enabling new instruments that could be used in a variety of missions, including future Landsats. Multiple CIRiS satellites flying in formation could replace larger or more complex instruments and satellites. The data collected could be used for land and water resource management, research and modeling.
CubeSat Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (CIRAS) - Thomas Pagano of JPL is leading the CubeSat Infrared Atmospheric Sounder (CIRAS) project. CIRAS is designed to develop a CubeSat-size instrument system capable of matching the temperature and water vapor profile measurements in the lower troposphere of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, or AIRS, instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite and the Cross Track Infrared Sounder, or CrIS, instrument on the NASA/NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System. In the future, constellations of CIRAS satellites could improve the timeliness and resolution of critical infrared sounding data to improve weather forecasting and support research in the areas of severe weather and climate.
Precipitation Profiling Radar in a CubeSat (RainCube) - RainCube, led by Eva Peral of JPL, will be the first active radar on a CubeSat platform. It will use a very compact deployable antenna and new processing technologies to validate a Ka-band precipitation radar. A constellation of RainCube satellites would be able to provide the temporal resolution for weather observations that could be used to improve forecasting models.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=5506