INCUS scientific team celebrates upcoming mission, launch
INCUS, the CSU-led NASA earth science satellite mission scheduled to be deployed in 2026, is under budget and ahead of schedule, lead scientist Sue van den Heever happily told her team on Tuesday.
That accomplishment comes despite the past year’s layoffs at partner JPL, the Eaton fire that destroyed JPL colleagues’ homes, and the federal shutdown.
“This was a really, really rough year, but there was no griping,” van den Heever, a University Distinguished Professor, proudly told attendees in Fort Collins for the annual INCUS science meeting. “We came together as a team and made things happen. The fact that this is moving forward and we’re here today is remarkable.”
University Distinguished Professor van den Heever serves as principal investigator on the mission, which features a trio of satellites aiming to understand why, when and where tropical convective storms form and why only some storms produce extreme weather. INCUS will provide the first-ever estimates of convective mass flux, or – put another way – how much air and water is transported upward within storms across the tropical and subtropical belt around the globe.
Data collected from the satellites can help researchers understand and better prepare for such major weather events as the tragic flooding of the Guadalupe River in central Texas in July, Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica in October, and conditions that created the second worst year for U.S. tornadoes in 2024.
The spacecraft, each carrying a radar, and one of which is carrying a radiometer, are expected to be complete by August 2026 with launch expected before August 2027.
This week’s meeting features many of the 200 scientists and engineers involved in the mission, including seven universities and two Colorado companies building the spacecraft, Blue Canyon Technologies and Tendeg. NASA employees were on furlough and not in attendance.
The team is spending the week talking both about the INCUS science and the complex algorithms involved in capturing observations of storms as INCUS flies above them. van den Heever said the team, which includes 25 early career scientists, has already produced numerous scientific papers with others on the way: “INCUS is leading the way in terms of integrated and multi-disciplinary science.”
Other CSU representatives included scientists with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), and Professor Steve Reising and University Distinguished Professor V. “Chandra” Chandrasekar in electrical and computer engineering.
CSU University Distinguished Professor Emeritus Graeme Stephens also surprised the team Tuesday by donating a painting of INCUS to the Department of Atmospheric Science. Stephens led the NASA CloudSat mission for CSU that launched in 2006.
Originally posted on SOURCE | Story by Emily Wilmsen
