![]() ![]() "It's the intensity of hurricanes - the wind speed and the storm surge - that really determines how much damage there will be and whether a population will need to evacuate or shelter in place."ĬYGNSS is the first orbital mission competitively selected by NASA's Earth Venture program, managed by the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program Office at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. "In the vast majority of cases we can predict a hurricane's track very accurately, but we still have a very hard time knowing how intense the storms will be when they get where they're going," said Derek Posselt, CYGNSS deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Ultimately, the measurements from this mission will help improve hurricane track and intensity forecasts." "CYGNSS will provide us with detailed measurements of hurricane wind speeds, an important indicator of a storm's intensity," said Christopher Ruf, CYGNSS principal investigator at the University of Michigan's Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering in Ann Arbor. CYGNSS will do this by using both direct and reflected signals from existing GPS satellites to obtain estimates of surface wind speed over the ocean. The CYGNSS constellation will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds in and near a hurricane's inner core, including regions beneath the eyewall and intense inner rainbands that previously could not be measured from space. "As the first orbital mission in our Earth Venture program, CYGNSS will make unprecedented measurements in the most violent, dynamic and important portions of tropical storms and hurricanes." "The launch of CYGNSS is a first for NASA and for the scientific community," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rocket was dropped and launched from Orbital's Stargazer L-1011 aircraft, which took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida. EST) Thursday aboard an Orbital ATK air-launched Pegasus XL launch vehicle. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) will provide scientists with advanced technology to see inside tropical storms and hurricanes as never before.ĬYGNSS launched into orbit at 5:37 a.m.
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