Small, nimble weather satellites could track the atmosphere moment by moment, boosting forecasts

Science reporter Paul Voosen reports on how small satellites are taking up opportunities left by bigger satellites to improve weather forecasting and climate monitoring. One example of this growing trend is TROPICS: "A four-CubeSat mission launched by NASA last year and led by Bill Blackwell, an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, demonstrated the promise. Flying in tandem, the satellites yielded unprecedented observations of the evolution of hurricane cores, Blackwell says. 'It’s all working out as we had hoped.' The National Hurricane Center has been using Tropics data ahead of what’s expected to be a busy Atlantic storm season. Tomorrow.io has licensed the technology behind Tropics and plans to build 18 similar satellites."