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so the crew engaged in quite a bit of

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maintenance work today but uh the focus

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of course uh every day for them

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throughout the week will be on those

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scientific investigations

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happening inside and outside of the

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station uh

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iss truly uh research platform these

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days uh it's enabling even more

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investigations

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every year to be flown new capabilities

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uh one specifically that's going to be

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arriving at the station on the next

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spacex dragon cargo flight again

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targeted to take place on september

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next month will be called iss rapidscat

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this morning we're lucky we're going to

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learn a little bit more about it

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join now by phone uh the principal

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investigator dr ernesto rodriguez from

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the jet propulsion laboratory dr

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rodriguez thanks for joining me today

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and if you could start me off just give

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me just give me an overview of this

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device i mean it's got an interesting

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name that's for sure i mean what what is

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a scatterometer

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yeah a scannerometer is an instrument

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that measures winds from space

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typically you wouldn't think that

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measuring the winds which are so

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ephemeral would be easy from space but

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what we do is we play a trick

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we use a radar

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that sends out microwave

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energy and when the wind blows over the

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water it makes little waves and the

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stronger the winds the bigger the waves

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these waves reflect the radar energy

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back to the instrument and by measuring

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the return power at the instrument we

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can actually estimate the wind speed and

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the direction by measuring from

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different incidence angles of the wind

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and so

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with this instrument

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which covers about

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1800 kilometers at any given time we can

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measure the entire earth

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from the space station will be between

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56 degrees and north and south

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within a day so we'll have a global

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snapshot

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of the winds over the earth every other

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day

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so definitely not

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um i mean at least to me not not at the

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the for the most intuitive way you would

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think to to measure wind from space but

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i mean that that's an amazing capability

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and and this instrument is being flown

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it's replacing another instrument that

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was on a different satellite so this is

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this is something that we've been you

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know trying to work for a while so

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what's what's the full story with that

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and nasa has been leading the

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measurement of winds from space for a

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long time

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and during the la the decade between

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2000 to 2009 we had an instrument called

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quickscat

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that measured the wins and in fact

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rapidscat

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is the son of quickscout in the sense

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that we've used many of its parts

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in order to

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really bring online something very

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quickly

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quickscope collected data over a decade

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it provided an invaluable climate data

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set

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but because of aging over a 10-year

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mission lifetime

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it stops spinning so one of the ways we

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build our global vision is to spin the

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antenna and collect the large swath

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so the instrument is still working

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but it can no longer spin and so it can

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no longer provide a global coverage

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every other day so we took the

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spare parts from quickscat assembled

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them tested them and in fairly short

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order after quick scat stops spinning

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we are able to

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put up space

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and help the international constellation

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of scatterometers which also right now

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has a european scatter armor called uh

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acecat from the umedsat to give a global

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picture of the earth every day

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so i mean much like the station this

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project also an international effort

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where where exactly on the station is

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rapid scat going to go

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it is mounted outside the columbus

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module

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and so actually it's a little bit tricky

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we had to trainer

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because we're using an existing

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instrument

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that uh

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we couldn't really design for the space

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station we built some mechanical

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attachments to attach to the attach

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points of the columbus module and point

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it down to earth so i believe you have

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an image there of how it's mounted on

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the columbus module and also a beam of

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how it scans has this pencil beam

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scatterometer that has a conical scan

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covering the 1800 kilometer swath

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okay and just to

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really bring it home so what what are

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the readings from this instrument going

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to be used for i mean what what will we

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there are many things that we're going

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to learn this specific mission has three

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components

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the first one is that because of the

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lack of

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the ability of quickscope to collect

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wins over a big swath

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we have a gap in our global monitoring

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of winds

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and so

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uh very importantly this instrument will

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come online and we'll be able to

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complement other instruments that are

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there

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to give us global coverage every day and

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this global coverage every day is used

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every by

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operational agencies such as noaa in the

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united states or ecmwf in europe to

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provide better forecasts of weather and

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also to do disaster management for

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instance where there are hurricanes

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approaching land

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these data can be used by weather

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forecasters to get much better

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predictions as to what the intensity and

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the track of the hurricane might be

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so an instrument and data that will be

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affecting a lot of people

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especially and i mean just personally us

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here in houston so

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again dr ernesto rodriguez from the jet

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propulsion laboratory talking to us

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about rapid scat thank you so much for

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joining us today good luck with the