Evolving the TriG RO Instrument to Life in a Cubesat Ecosystem

Tom
Meehan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
G. W. Franklin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
S. Low, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
S. X. Esterhuizen, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Invited Talk
(Invited Talk)
NASA’s TriG Radio Occultation (RO) instrument is slated for its first flight in a few months on the COSMIC-2a mission. During the 5 year timeline of the TriG development, many more flight opportunities for smaller, lower-power RO instruments came to the fore. The TriG RO instrument is designed to provide twice as many RO measurements as the COSMIC-1 GOX and greatly improve signal recovery in the lower 2 km of the tropics. However, as implemented, TriG is not compatible with the power, mass, volume and cost profile desired for a cubesat payload.

We will describe instrument developments at NASA/JPL following TriG that are compatible with these new “small footprint” instruments as the apply to RO , reflections and POD for future missions.
OSTS session
Regional and Global CAL/VAL for Assembling a Climate Data Record