18+ Months of Tropical Cyclone and Convective Storm Observations with the NASA TROPICS Pathfinder Satellite

The NASA TROPICS Earth Venture (EVI-3) CubeSat constellation mission will provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate of approximately 60 minutes for the baseline mission) over the tropics that can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. The TROPICS constellation mission comprises four 3U CubeSats (5.4 kg each) in two low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat comprises a Blue Canyon Technologies bus and a high-performance radiometer payload to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel at 205 GHz that is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles. TROPICS spatial resolution, measurement sensitivity, and calibration accuracy and stability are all comparable with current state-of-the-art observing platforms. Two launches for the TROPICS constellation mission are planned for the Summer of 2023. Data will be downlinked to the ground via the KSAT-Lite ground network. NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program Office approved the separate TROPICS Pathfinder mission, which launched on June 30, 2021, in advance of the TROPICS constellation mission as a technology demonstration and risk reduction effort. The TROPICS Pathfinder mission continues to yield excellent data over 18+ months of operation and has provided an opportunity to checkout and optimize all mission elements prior to the primary constellation mission. This presentation will describe the on-orbit results for the successful TROPICS Pathfinder precursor mission and will describe the recent development progress for the TROPICS constellation mission and discuss recent activities to improve the data latency and generation of near-real-time products for forecasting applications.