A new set of nanosatellites are coming to town… and by that, we mean space town. The TROPICS satellite constellation will help reduce the lag left behind by the data collected by polar satellites.

Polar satellites are great for watching for tropical systems, but each orbit takes 12 hours. Imagine all that could happen to a tropical system in those 12 hours. The small new satellites will provide data every 30 to 40 minutes. The golden cube at the top is the microwave radiometer (see picture below). It measures the precipitation, temperature, and humidity inside tropical storms.

The Time-Revolved Observations of Precipitation structure and Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats mission, or TROPICS, will increase understanding of how a tropical storm might change in much shorter time scales, and how its structure and intensity changes too.

In a recent paper published by the American Meteorological Society, researchers found that the data provided by these satellites could improve a storm’s track by 15% and intensity by 10%. This seems small, but it is a huge improvement! Imagine how much money it can save by making better calls on evacuations and how many lives could be saved.

These satellites are small, about the size of a shoebox, and will be configured to be in orbit, sharing an orbit at a 30-degree angle to the Equator. They will be configured to crisscross the Equator allowing for more frequent monitoring and data gathering across tropical regions.

The satellites will be launched to space in 3 separate trips in early 2022.