NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station

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JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

Josh Byerly 281-483-5111
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston
Josh.byerly@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-037 Jan. 29, 2013

NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-037&cid=release_2013-037

PASADENA, Calif. – In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat
satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in
2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction.

The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring,
and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions influence Earth's climate.

"The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great
example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth," said
Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager.

ISS-RapidScat will help fill the data gap created when QuikScat, which was designed to last two
years but operated for 10, stopped collecting ocean wind data in late 2009. A scatterometer is a
microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning
the surface of Earth from an aircraft or a satellite.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have studied next-generation
replacements for QuikScat, but a successor will not be available soon. To meet this challenge cost-
effectively, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's station program
proposed adapting leftover QuikScat hardware in combination with new hardware for use on the
space station.

"ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving
global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms," said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat
project manager at JPL. "By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and
recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed
to launch a new satellite."

ISS-RapidScat will have measurement accuracy similar to QuikScat's and will survey all regions of
Earth accessible from the space station's orbit. The instrument will be launched to the space station
aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. It will be installed on the end of the station's Columbus
laboratory as an autonomous payload requiring no interaction by station crew members. It is expected
to operate aboard the station for two years.

ISS-RapidScat will take advantage of the space station's unique characteristics to advance
understanding of Earth's winds. Current scatterometer orbits pass the same point on Earth at
approximately the same time every day. Since the space station's orbit intersects the orbits of each of
these satellites about once every hour, ISS-RapidScat can serve as a calibration standard and help
scientists stitch together the data from multiple sources into a long-term record.

ISS-RapidScat also will collect measurements of Earth's global wind field at all times of day for all
locations. Variations in winds caused by the sun can play a significant role in the formation of
tropical clouds and tropical systems that play a dominant role in Earth's water and energy cycles. ISS-
RapidScat observations will help scientists understand these phenomena better and improve weather
and climate models.

The ISS-RapidScat project is a joint partnership of JPL and NASA's International Space Station
Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, with support from the Earth Science
Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more on NASA's scatterometry missions, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm . For more
information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .

You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL
for NASA.

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