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The Earth Observer: Jul - Aug, 2023
In This Issue
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- Feature Articles
- A Pale Blue Dot in Washington: NASA's Earth Day Celebration at Union Station4
- Meeting Summaries
- Continuing the Continuity Conversation: Summary of the 2023 MODIS/VIIRS Science Team Meeting13
- In The News
- NASA's TROPICS Offers Multiple Views of Intensifying Hurricanes27
- Powerful NASA-ISRO Earth Observing Satellite Coming Together in India29
- NASA Wants to Identify Phytoplankton Species from Space. Here's Why.31
- Also Included in this Issue
- Earth Science Meeting and Workshop Calendar28
- NASA Earth Science in the News34
The Editor's Corner
Steve Platnick, EOS Senior Project Scientist
This summer—just ahead of the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane season—the NASA Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission released its “first light” images. TROPICS is a constellation of observing platforms that measures temperature, humidity, and precipitation with spatial resolution comparable to current operational passive microwave sounders—but with unprecedented temporal resolution. TROPICS is comprised of four 3U CubeSats,1 each hosting a 12-channel passive microwave radiometer. While the primary mission objective of TROPICS is to relate temperature, humidity, and precipitation structure to the evolution of tropical cyclone intensity, a diversity of other applications have also been identified for TROPICS, including data assimilation, rainfall monitoring, and disaster response. There are also plans for synergistic applications with other satellite missions—in particular with NASA’s other hurricane-focused CubeSat constellation: the Cyclone Global Navigation Satelllite System (CYGNSS). To learn more about these collaborations, see the 2023 Joint Applications Workshop on NASA's TROPICS and CYGNSS Satellite Missions. Links to many of the presentations are included on the agenda.
Also in this issue are summaries of NASA's 2023 Earth Day celebration at Union Station in Washington, DC, and the 2023 MODIS/VIIRS Science Team Meeting, as well as news and upcoming meeting/event highlights from NASA Earth Science.
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