Ocean Surface Vector Winds (OSVW)

Ocean surface winds are critically important in naval operations. They may aid, hinder, or negate maneuvers and operations, and are a primary consideration in routing ships. Continuous and reliable information on favorable and unfavorable sea state is critical for a broad range of naval missions, including strategic ship movement and positioning, aircraft carrier operations, aircraft deployment, effective weapons use, underway replenishment, and littoral operations. Wind measurements are also used to support short-term weather forecasting (e.g. as inputs for the Navy Global Environmental Model (NAVGEM)) and predictions of weather warnings. The overall objective of ASTRA’s STTR project is to develop a novel Nanosat payload for the Navy’s measurement requirements for Ocean Surface Vector Winds (OSVW). The goal of the Phase I effort was to determine the feasibility of developing a small-SWaP CubeSat Ocean Observing (CO2) sensor to measure ocean surface wind speed from CubeSat platforms. Our Phase I research activities demonstrated the feasibility of developing a novel low size, weight, and power (SWaP) sensor and associated signal processing algorithms to support the Navy’s needs for Meteorological and Oceanographic (METOC) measurement and data collection and we are ready to transition into Phase II.