>> So the crew engaged in quite a bit of maintenance work today,
but the focus, of course, for every day
for them throughout the week will be
on the scientific investigations happening inside
and outside of the station.
The ISS truly a research platform these days.
It's enabling even more investigations every year
to be flown, new capabilities.
One specifically that's going to be arriving at the station,
the next SpaceX Dragon cargo flight.
Again, targeted to take place September, next month,
will be called ISS-RapidScat.
This morning, we're lucky.
We're going to learn a little bit more about it,
and we're joined now by phone the principal investigator,
Dr. Ernesto Rodriguez from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Dr. Rodriguez, thanks for joining me today.
And if you could start me off;
just give me an overview of this device.
I mean, it's got an interesting name, that's for sure.
I mean, what is a scatterometer?
>> Yeah, a scatterometer is an instrument
that measures winds from space.
Typically you wouldn't think that measuring the winds,
which are so ephemeral, would be easy from space.
But what we do is we play a trick.
We use a radar that sends out microwave energy.
And when the wind blows over the water, it makes little waves.
And the stronger the winds, the bigger the waves.
These waves reflect the radar energy back to the instrument.
And by measuring the returned power at the instrument,
we can actually estimate the wind speed and the direction,
by measuring from different incidence angles of the wind.
And so, with this instrument, which covers
about 1,800 kilometers at any given time,
we can measure the entire earth.
From the space station, it'll be between 56 degrees at north
and south, within a day.
So we'll have a global snapshot of the winds
over the earth every other day.
>> So, definitely not, I mean at least to me,
not the most intuitive way you would think
to measure wind from space.
But, I mean, that's an amazing capability.
And this instrument is being flown.
It's replacing another instrument that was
on a different satellite.
So this something that we've been trying to work for awhile.
So what's the full story with that?
>> NASA has been leading the measurements of winds
from space for a long time.
And during the decade between 2000 to 2009,
we had an instrument called QuikSCAT
that measured the winds.
In fact, RapidScat is the son of QuikSCAT, in the sense
that we've used many of its parts in order
to really bring online something very quickly.
QuikSCAT collected data over a decade.
It provided an invaluable climate data set,
but because of aging,
over a 10-year mission lifetime, it stopped spinning.
So one of the ways we build our global vision is
to spin the antennae and collect a large swath.
So the instrument is still working,
but it can no longer spin
and so it can no longer provide a global coverage every
other day.
So we took the spare parts from QuikSCAT,
assembled them, tested them.
And, in fairly short order, after QuikSCAT stopped spinning,
we are able to put up space
and help the international constellation of scatterometers,
which also right now has a European scatterometer called
ASCAT from the EUMETSAT to give a global picture
of the earth every day.
>> So, I mean, much like the station, this project,
also an international effort.
Where exactly on the station is RapidScat going to go?
>> It is mounted outside the Columbus module,
and so actually it's a little bit tricky.
Because we're using an existing instrument
that we couldn't really design for the Space Station,
we built a mechanical attachments to attach
to the attach points of the Columbus module
and pointed down to earth.
So I believe you have an image there of how it's mounted
on the Columbus module, and also a beam of how it scans
as its pencil beam scatterometer
that has a conical scan covering the 1,800-kilometer swath.
>> Okay, and just to really bring it home,
so what are the readings
from this instrument going to be used for?
I mean, what will we learn by flying RapidScat on the station?
>> There are many things that we're going to learn.
This specific mission has three components.
The first one is that because of the lack of the ability
of QuikSCAT to collect winds over a big swath, we have a gap
in our global monitoring of wind.
And so, very importantly, this instrument will come online
and will be able to complement other instruments that are there
to give us global coverage every day.
And this global coverage every day is used
by operational agencies such as NOAH in the United States,
or ECMWF in Europe, to provide better forecasts of weather.
And also to do disaster management.
For instance, where there are hurricanes approaching land.
These data can be used by weather forecasters
to get much better predictions as to what the intensity
and the track of the hurricane might be.
>> So an instrument data
that will be affecting a lot of people.
And I mean just personally, us here in Houston.
So again, Dr. Ernesto Rodriquez
from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory talking
to us about RapidScat.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Good luck with the mission and can't wait to see it fly.
>> Thank you so much. ------------------------------387b266b16dd--