NASA’s Earth Science Technology Validation on CubeSats and its impact in building future missions

With the advent of increased CubeSat and SmallSat constellation deployments by both Governments and Commercial entities, there is a need to assess the technology maturity and their impact on scientific research. Since 2012 the NASA Earth Science Technology Office has been running a research program focused on technology validation in space, In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST). This program encourages flying new technologies and new measurement concepts on CubeSat platforms. The basic premise of the program is to validate new technologies before they are implimented on CubeSat constellations or small satellites. The technology validated under this program was instrumental in future CubeSat constellation architectures such as TROPICS and TWICE. Recently three CubeSats, under the InVEST program, were launched from International Space Station. Two of these CubeSats have started returning valuable data on hurricanes and storms. Some of the successful instruments like IceCube have produced the first ever global atmospheric cloud ice map at 883-GHz band. Similarly RainCube and TEMPEST-D are producing valuable data from near-overlapping observations of typhoons and hurricanes.
This talk will provide an overview of instruments and measurement concepts deployed on CubeSats being funded by NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and their contribution to address some of the technical challenges with future science missions.