Blue Canyon Technologies, a mission services provider and small satellite maker, was chosen by RTX to construct two 12U CubeSat busses for NASA’s PolSIR mission. The mission’s goal is to investigate high-altitude formation of ice clouds in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Blue Canyon will not only develop and manufacture the bus platforms, but it will also handle mission operations.
The Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer, or PolSIR, is an instrument that will monitor the entire diurnal cycle of high-altitude ice clouds in order to enhance climate forecasts and give climate models crucial information about future changes to Earth’s atmosphere.
Chris Winslett, general manager of Blue Canyon Technologies, stated, “Supporting this vital mission builds on our heritage of weather monitoring missions including TEMPEST-D and TROPICS.”
The radiometers on board each spacecraft will monitor the daily cycle of ice content in the clouds using two different wavelengths in two different spectral bands. The spacecraft will be launched into orbits that are separated by a duration of three to nine hours. These two instruments will monitor the daily cycle of ice content in the clouds throughout time.
