LONDON: Nasa engineers have started working on the first of eight micro-satellites under the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) project.
The system, being built at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, will improve hurricane forecasting by making measurements of ocean surface winds in and near the eye wall of tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes throughout their life cycle.
Communication antennas, attitude control, GPS receiver, and other instrumentation will be installed on the satellite frame in the coming weeks.
“We are now in the last phase of the beginning of a new era in hurricane observations,” said Chris Ruf, CYGNSS principal investigator at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
