Summer is almost here! Summer is one of the best seasons. All of the positive things are delightful: swimming, hot dogs, and movie nights. But down in the Southern Hemisphere, things are a little more intense. Summer down here is Hurricane season. And with the problem of global warming, hurricanes and tropical storms are getting rougher and more powerful than ever before. Even with our current technology, it’s still a problem - we detected a Hurricane forming only one week before it hit land. That is a very limited time window to warn and evacuate the area. But NASA has a new group of satellites that could help.
TROPICS
TROPICS (short for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity) are microwave-sized spacecraft that are launching throughout the next few months. These spacecraft are called Cubesats, a new kind of technology that NASA has been testing out for the past few years. There are 4 TROPICS satellites in the group that have many different goals in detecting a possibly dangerous storm. First, they must measure the temperature in an area. If this area shows an unusual amount of heat, then the TROPICS spacecraft must measure moisture and precipitation in the area as well. If they find that this area of the ocean is unusually high in all of these measurements, then that could mean a possible storm is coming. This could warn people much earlier if in fact that a storm is coming.
A Constellation Group
The TROPICS are being called a “Satellite Constellation,” not just because they make up a group in space, but also because they will be visible like stars in some areas of the United States. These spacecraft will orbit the Earth extremely low as well. So if this summer you see something that looks like a dim star orbiting the Earth, just say a simple thank you to it. It might just save thousands of lives this summer and maybe in the future too.