Teams working on NASA’s INCUS (Investigation of Convective Updrafts) mission, the first space-based survey of the dynamics of tropical convective storms, have completed assembly and tested two of the mission’s small satellites, or SmallSats. Testing continues on the third SmallSat and is scheduled for completion no earlier than September in advance of a 2027 launch.
The three satellites will fly in tight coordination in low Earth orbit, with the first and second satellites separated by 30 seconds and the second and third satellite by 90 seconds.
Characterized by the sudden and intense lifting of large amounts of air and water, tropical convective storms provide more than half of the world’s precipitation, a crucial source of life-supporting fresh water. But they also produce severe weather, which can increase risks to life and property. The INCUS mission will help improve understanding of where, when, and why convective storms form.
Led by principal investigator Sue van den Heever of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, INCUS will use spaceborne radar instruments developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to observe the vertical motion of air and water, known as convective mass flux, as storms develop and evolve. The mission will also explore how environmental factors such as air temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, and wind direction correlate with that movement.
These insights will improve storm forecasting, potentially mitigating loss of life and property damage in affected communities, by helping decision-makers plan for and respond to severe weather events and manage freshwater supplies.
Teams at NASA JPL built each INCUS satellite’s radar, which were combined with a deployable mesh radar reflector made by Tendeg in Louisville, Colorado. The middle satellite also carries a microwave radiometer, also made at NASA JPL, that provides spatial context to the vertical precipitation profiles provided by the radars.
The three assemblies shipped in late 2025 and early 2026 to Blue Canyon Technologies in Lafayette, Colorado, where they were integrated with Blue Canyon’s spacecraft buses. The first two satellites, also called observatories, have successfully undergone vibration and thermal vacuum testing to ensure they will be able to withstand the jostling of launch and the extreme temperatures of space.
These two observatories also shipped to Tendeg, where teams successfully performed test deployments of the reflectors. Then they returned to Blue Canyon for additional testing. They’ll remain in storage before heading out next year to the launch site at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Funded through the Earth Venture Mission-3 acquisition under NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program, INCUS is one of several missions fulfilling the clouds, convection, and precipitation requirements of NASA’s Earth System Observatory, a series of interconnected missions set to study our home planet’s dynamic natural systems and how they interact. The mission is also part of FALCON (Fleet for the Atmosphere Linking Commercial Observations with NASA), a fleet of atmosphere-observing satellites that will combine hardware contributions from NASA centers, universities, and commercial partners.
