Thursday, December 15, 2016

Microsatellites: CYGNSS takes wing

One of the advantages of microsats is that you can deploy them affordably in constellations to measure a given phenomenon from many points at once, or to make sure one satellite is always over a given area beneath the orbital planes.  Orbital's really cool Pegasus launcher (the first private launcher in the US and the first aircraft-launched space booster known to be a success)   placed 8 29-kilogram CYGNSS hurricane-watching satellites in orbit today. Congratulations to Orbital, to the satellite builders (SWRI and University of Michigan, with Sierra Nevada building the deployment mechanism), and to NASA.

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