Radiometer development for small satellite microwave atmospheric remote sensing

Recent advances in low-power millimeterwave low-noise amplifier technologies have enabled the hosting of high-performance atmospheric sounding instruments on very small satellites. Microwave instrumentation is particularly well suited for such implementations, as the sensor requirements for power, pointing, and spatial resolution (aperture size) can readily be accommodated by a nanosatellite platform. Several missions have been formulated to demonstrate the core technologies. The Microsized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite, second generation (MicroMAS-2), will demonstrate temperature sounding near 118 GHz and moisture sounding near 183 GHz. MicroMAS-2a and MicroMAS-2b are scheduled to launch in 2017. The Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration (MiRaTA) cubesat will demonstrate multi-band atmospheric sounding and co-located GPS radio occultation. MiRaTA will launch in 2017, and will fly a tri-band sounder (60, 183, and 206 GHz) and a GPS radio occultation (GPS-RO) sensor. Both MicroMAS and MiRaTA are 3U CubeSats (aggregates of 10 × 10 × 10 cm cubes). The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission utilizes these technology advancements in a complete mission with a constellation of CubeSats similar in capability to MicroMAS-2. TROPICS is expected to launch in 2020. The Earth Observing Nanosatellite-Microwave (EON) concept is a 12U CubeSat designed to provide most of the capabilities of current operational microwave sounders. These new capabilities offer the potential of higher performance and reliability through the use of constellation observatories.