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TROPICS

The Time Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS)

Imagine if you could go inside a powerful cyclone? NASA’s TROPICS does and it aims to save lives on the journey

Tropical storms have been a source of some of the most devastating natural disasters, claiming countless lives and disrupting society. A rise in global temperatures is expected to ramp up storm frequency and magnitude . NASA’s Time Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) launched in 2020 and is focused on improving our ability to accurately predict storm strength, giving people more time to evacuate and save lives. How intense is a tropical storm going to get and what causes these cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons)? TROPICS is on a mission to find out with 3D temperature and humidity, cloud ice and precipitation tracking. This mission is critical because close to 60 million, nearly 1/5 of Americans, live along the East and Gulf coasts. We have seen Atlantic landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) that can cause death and destruction like Katrina and recent estimates project a doubling of US economic losses from TCs every ten years!

TROPICS is going deep inside cyclones, so we can forecast storms better, improve disaster preparation and ultimately save lives.
-William Blackwell, Principal Investigator, TROPICS

TROPICS provides high‐resolution, rapid‐updates on storm intensity and size (wind and precipitation structure). The science team measures precipitation and microclimates from 5 kilometers to several hundred kilometers across the sky. Better storm prediction over all ocean basins is provided by 12 small satellites called CubeSats. They fly aboard three low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat hosts a high‐performance radiometer tracking water vapour absorption and precipitation‐sized ice particles. These instruments allow the team to actually go inside to the core of a cyclone, with high resolution from different angles. The power of this knowledge about how cyclones form, how they last and what makes some more intense than others, is leading to smarter storm predictions and better storm preparation by towns, cities, states and the people living in them. Come inside a cyclone and explore what we know so far.

TROPICS Mission-Overview

https://disasters.nasa.gov/programs/tropics

NASA TROPICS blog

LACCE

LACCE: Landslide Change Characterization Experiment

Science: LACCE will use high-resolution, targeted, airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, field instruments, and models to quantify the number, size, motion, and groundwater hydrology of active landslides, and measure their sensitivity to changes in precipitation.

White Paper: LACCE White Paper

ROSES Call: ROSES25: A.6 Earth Venture Suborbital-4 Landslide Change Characterization Experiment Science Team

HAMAQ

HAMAQ: Hemispheric Airborne Measurements of Air Quality

Science: Hemispheric Airborne Measurements of Air Quality (HAMAQ) is funded under NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-4) program. Current plans include two deployments in 2028, including the Mexico City megalopolis and another North American site yet to be selected. The effort will include two aircraft, NASA’s B777 for in situ sampling and G-III for remote sensing. These aircraft will be used to complete the integrated observing system, combining satellite observations, ground-based monitoring, research observations, and air quality modeling.

Website: https://science.larc.nasa.gov/HAMAQ/

White Paper: HAMAQ White Paper.

ROSES: Anticipate solicitation release in Q1CY2026

FarmFlux

FarmFlux

FarmFlux: While the burning of fossil fuels remains the leading source of carbon in our atmosphere, farmlands and ranchlands are also substantial sources of gas and particle emissions. In the FarmFlux mission, led by Glenn Wolfe of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, researchers will measure the amount of greenhouse gases, nitrogen, and other pollutants that are emitted from agricultural lands across the United States.

Websites: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/acd/campaigns/farmflux

https://espo.nasa.gov/farmflux

ROSES: FarmFlux Science Team ROSES call

ROSES: No-Cost Participation in/Contributions to FarmFlux Science Team

White Paper: FarmFlux White Paper

INSPYRE

EVS-4 INSPYRE: INjected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment

Science: The INjected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment (INSPYRE) Science Team will constrain the role of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) and characterize their physical links to extreme wildfire behavior.

Website: https://espo.nasa.gov/inspyre

White Paper: INSPYRE White Paper

ROSES: INSPYRE Science Team ROSES call

Snow4Flow

Science: Snow4Flow: Quantifying the ongoing retreat of glaciers and ice sheets – and projecting their futures – are major societal concerns due to their contribution to sea-level rise and influence on water resources, natural hazards, and associated socioeconomic impacts.

Website: https://snow4flow .lpl.arizona.edu

White Paper: Snow4Flow White Paper

ROSES: Anticipate solicitation release in Q1CY2025

FORTE

FORTE: Arctic Coastlines – Frontlines of Rapidly Transforming Ecosystems

Science: Investigate how nearshore Arctic ecosystems–from lower watersheds to coastlines and adjacent seas – respond to changes in the mobilization, magnitude, composition, and seasonality in land-ocean fluxes and what are the implications.

Websites: https://espo.nasa.gov/forte

https://cce.nasa.gov/forte/index.html

ROSES: FORTE Science Team ROSES call

White Paper: FORTE White Paper

PolSIR

Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Imager (PolSIR)

https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/instruments/polsir

The PolSIR instrument – short for Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer – will help humanity better understand Earth’s dynamic atmosphere by studying ice clouds that form at high altitudes throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions.

The representation of ice clouds in Global Climate Models (GCMs) remains a major source of uncertainty in weather predictions. Ice clouds have been identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as one of the biggest unknown in our understanding of the Earth’s weather system.

The goal of PolSIR is to better characterize and understand diurnal variability of tropical and sub-tropical ice clouds, to provide key observational constraints on ice properties in weather models, and to enable modelers to develop more accurate cloud parameterizations.

PolSIR consists of two, 16U CubeSats equipped with a cross-track scanning polarized submillimeter radiometer in the spectral range of 325–680 GHz; fly in separate, 52-degree inclination, non-sun-synchronous orbits, taking science measurements between ±35 degrees latitude enabling monthly sampling of the diurnal cycle of ice clouds and their microphysical properties.

Two years of concurrent observations, enabling comparison of daily, seasonal, and annual cycles.

The PolSIR instrument – short for Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer – will help humanity better understand Earth’s dynamic atmosphere and its impacts by studying ice clouds that form at high altitudes throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions.

INCUS

The INCUS Mission

The INCUS mission provides the first tropics-wide investigation of the evolution of the vertical transport of air and water by convective storms, one of the most influential, yet unmeasured atmospheric processes. Such measurements are central to improving our capability to better predict extreme weather events.

https://incus.colostate.edu/

The Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) mission will be a collection of three SmallSats, carrying RainCube-like radars with crosstrack scanning and a Tempest-D-like radiometer, flying in tight coordination. INCUS aims to directly address why convective storms, heavy precipitation, and clouds occur exactly when and where they form. The investigation stems from the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which lays out ambitious, but critically necessary, research and observation guidance. NASA selected INCUS through the agency’s Earth Venture Mission-3 (EVM-3) solicitation that sought complete, space-based investigations to address important science questions and produce data of societal relevance within the Earth science field..

Aquarius

https://aquarius.nasa.gov/

The joint U.S./Argentinian Aquarius/Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC)-D mission was launched June 10, 2011, and ended on June 8, 2015, when an essential part of the power and attitude control system for the spacecraft stopped operating. The Aquarius instrument successfully achieved its science objectives and completed its primary three-year mission in November 2014.

Aquarius/SAC-D mapped the salinity (the concentration of dissolved salt) at the ocean surface, information critical to improving our understanding of two major components of Earth’s climate system: the water cycle and ocean circulation. By measuring ocean salinity from space, Aquarius provided new insights into how the massive natural exchange of freshwater between the ocean, atmosphere and sea ice influences ocean circulation, weather and climate.

Aquarius/SAC-D mapped the salinity (the concentration of dissolved salt) at the ocean surface, information critical to improving our understanding of two major components of Earth’s climate system

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