Novel Nanosat Payloads for Naval Weather Needs

Near surface ocean winds, generating the momentum flux affecting ocean circulation and mixing, have long been understood to be the key driving force in air-sea interaction processes. Global mapping of near surface ocean vector winds (OVW) is crucial for weather forecasting and many oceanographic and atmospheric studies. Amongst the more critical applications of OVW measurements are their use by the Navy and merchant shipping for ship routing, and by NOAA to predict hurricane intensity and landfall. A low-cost polarimetric radiometer, referred to as WindCube, taking advantage of developments at MMA Design LLC in deployable antenna technology, and combined with receiver technology at JPL, offers an attractive opportunity to develop a gapfiller capability; one that can be quickly fielded in the event of the failure or premature aging of an existing on-orbit system. With MMA's offset-fed reflectarray antenna, connected to a JPL-designed radiometer, and mounted on a spinning CubeSat, to provide wide area coverage, our proposed system design uses the experience and know-how of our Georgia Tech partner and JPL collaborators.