A51S-08
Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Technology Demonstration (TEMPEST-D): Risk Reduction for 6U-Class Nanosatellite Constellations

Friday, 18 December 2015: 09:24
3004 (Moscone West)
Steven C Reising1, Gaier Todd2, Christian D Kummerow3, V. Chandrasekar4, Sharmila Padmanabhan5, Boon Lim6, Shannon Thomas Brown5, Susan C van den Heever7, Tristian L'Ecuyer8, Christopher S Ruf9, Zhengzhao Johnny Luo10, Stephen J Munchak11, Ziad S Haddad5 and Sid Ahmed Boukabara12, (1)Colorado State University, Microwave Systems Laboratory, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (2)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (4)Colorado State University, 1373 Campus, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (5)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (7)Colorado State University, Atmospheric Science, Fort Collins, CO, United States, (8)University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, (9)University of Michigan Ann Arbor, AOSS, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (10)CUNY City College of New York, New York, NY, United States, (11)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (12)NOAA NESDIS, Camp Springs, MD, United States
Abstract:
The Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Technology Demonstration (TEMPEST-D) is designed to demonstrate required technology to enable a constellation of 6U-Class nanosatellites to directly observe the time evolution of clouds and study the conditions that control the transition of clouds to precipitation using high-temporal resolution observations. TEMPEST millimeter-wave radiometers in the 90-GHz to 183-GHz frequency range penetrate into the cloud to observe key changes as the cloud begins to precipitate or ice accumulates inside the storm. The evolution of ice formation in clouds is important for climate prediction since it largely drives Earth’s radiation budget. TEMPEST improves understanding of cloud processes and helps to constrain one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate models.

 TEMPEST-D provides observations at five millimeter-wave frequencies from 90 to 183 GHz using a single compact instrument that is well suited for the 6U-Class architecture and fits well within the capabilities of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI), for which TEMPEST-D was approved in 2015. For a potential future mission of one year of operations, five identical 6U-Class satellites deployed in the same orbital plane with 5-10 minute spacing at ~400 km altitude and 50°-65° inclination are expected to capture 3 million observations of precipitation, including 100,000 deep convective events. TEMPEST is designed to provide critical information on the time evolution of cloud and precipitation microphysics, yielding a first-order understanding of the behavior of assumptions in current cloud-model parameterizations in diverse climate regimes.

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