Ocean Vector Winds

Since the 1970's, NASA has carried out a series of missions that have focused on monitoring winds over the ocean surface from space. The first attempt occurred when NASA built a “technology demonstration” instrument that flew onboard NASA's Skylab – the United States' first space station – from 1973 to 1979. This successful demonstration showed that remotely sensed measurements of the speed and direction of ocean surface winds was possible using space-based instruments called “scatterometers.”

NASA launched the SeaSat-A Scatterometry System in 1978. It was not until nearly twenty years later that the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) would launch onboard the Japanese Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS-I). Following the end of the NSCAT mission, NASA built two identical SeaWinds instruments. The first launched in 1999 on NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite. The second launched onboard the Japanese ADEOS-II satellite in 2002. In 2011, the Aquarius instrument was launched onboard the SAC-D satellite. Built primarily to measure sea surface salinity, its microwave radiometer was able to retrieve wind speed but not direction. In 2014, NASA installed a refurbished spare QuikSCAT instrument to fly on the International Space Station (ISS), called the ISS Rapid Scatterometer (RapidSCAT). In 2015, NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission began retrieving wind speed. Launched in late 2016, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) became NASA's first satellite mission to measure surface wind speed in the inner core of tropical cyclones. The Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) instrument was installed on the ISS in 2022, giving a view of the ocean surface at the different times of the day during each orbit.