Ten years after Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic, construction of NASA’s next-generation hurricane-observing satellite mission now is underway in Texas. NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System mission, a constellation of eight microsatellites, 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. CYGNSS will allow scientists to probe the inner core of hurricanes from space for the first time, using both direct and reflected signals from existing GPS satellites to obtain estimates of surface wind speeds over the ocean. The mission is scheduled to launch in late 2016 on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL expendable rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with science operations beginning in the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season.
