NASA has announced the successful activation of RapidScat (Rapid Scatterometer), a scatterometer transported to the International Space Station by the Dragon spacecraft and therefore also called ISS-RapidScat. It’s an instrument designed to monitor ocean winds to contribute to climate research, weather forecasting, and the monitoring of phenomena such as hurricanes. It’s an experimental instrument to use the Station as a platform for observations generally made by satellites.
This type of instrument uses radar pulses, specifically low-energy microwave, to observe the speed and direction of winds over the oceans. Various satellites with scatterometers have been launched over the years to make this type of monitoring.
RapidScat is an experiment created with a small budget because this time the instrument was built using mostly parts built for the QuikSCAT (Quick Scatterometer) mission, a satellite launched on June 19, 1999, ended on November 19, 2009. The project was RapidScat completed in 18 months, a time very fast by NASA’s standards as usually missions are developed over many years.
Some parts of RapidScat are new but it’s off-the-shelf hardware that isn’t particularly expensive. The estimates for a mission to launch a satellite with a scatterometer are around $400 million, in this case the cost is approximately $26 million.
RapidScat arrived at the International Space Station in September on the Dragon spacecraft. After a few days it’s been installed on the Columbus module in a complex operation performed using the robotic arm Canadarm2 together with the DEXTRE module, which is used exactly for sophisticated operations.
Generally, satellites equipped with scatterometers are placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. This means that they pass on the equator at the same time each day. Instead, the International Space Station has an orbit of a different type so RapidScat will see different parts of the planet at different times. The consequence is that it will perform measurements on the same area at different times. Thanks to this feature, RapidScat will also allow to complement the measurements of other satellites of that type.
The RapidScat mission is expected to last at least two years. This is just the beginning of an experimental program for the use of the International Space Station as a platform for Earth’s observations. Some other scientific instruments should be sent in the next resupply missions.
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