INSTRUMENT 01 OF 5 . GEN 2Microwave Sounder
Microwave Sounder
It reads the storm through the cloud. By measuring natural microwave energy from oxygen and water vapor, it reveals temperature and moisture at different heights - day or night, through most clouds
Overview
The microwave sounder measures natural microwave energy emitted by the atmosphere. Scanning across a wide swath, it retrieves temperature and moisture at multiple heights through most cloud, during both day and night.
- Sensing
- Passive microwave
- Ground resolution
- 7–25 km
- Swath width
- 2,000 km
An MRI of the sky
A microwave sounder reads the faint natural glow that oxygen and water vapor give off, and from it reconstructs the temperature and humidity of the air at many heights - a vertical slice of the atmosphere.
Crucially, microwaves pass through most cloud. They work in the stormy, overcast conditions where a camera sees only a white lid - and it works in the dark.
An ordinary weather-satellite camera photographs the cloud tops: it shows the lid, not what's cooking underneath. The sounder trades the crisp picture for the one thing the picture can't give you - what the air is actually doing inside.
From glow to profile
Oxygen is evenly mixed through the atmosphere, so its microwave emission near 50–60 GHz and 118 GHz is a thermometer for the air. Water-vapor lines at 23.8 and 183 GHz read the moisture.
Each channel is tuned to peak at a different height. Stack them and you recover the profile - temperature and moisture, layer over layer, top toward surface.
It reads broad layers, not fine slices - the honest trade is covered further down. Bands shown are the heritage physics of the modality; DeepSky's own channel set is not a public figure.
One reading, many products.
A single all-weather sounding feeds a whole family of the fields forecasters and models depend on — the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere where almost nothing else can see.
From an observation to a decision
1. Observation
Temperature and moisture profiles reveal the atmospheric conditions driving a developing storm. Cloud-penetrating precipitation observations reveal storm structure.
2. Decision
National meteorological services and hurricane forecast centers use these observations to judge how fast a cyclone is intensifying, escalate watches, and feed the soundings into global weather models.
3. Impact
Earlier, more confident intensification and track forecasts give emergency managers more lead time, improving preparedness and short-range forecast skill—especially over data-sparse oceans and the tropics.
Already in orbit
Microwave sounders have been flying operationally for decades, forming the backbone of global weather forecasting. DeepSky extends that proven measurement with a new commercial constellation
From hours to nearly every hour
Traditional sounders may leave 6-7 hours between observations. High-revisit sounders can return in roughly 70–90 minutes, revealing rapidly-evolving phenomena such as thunderstorms, fronts, and tropical cyclones, whose critical evolution may be missed in between scans from the operational backbone
NASA's TROPICS demonstrated ~70–90 minute tropical revisit with three satellites, allowing forecasters to follow storm evolution and eyewall changes far more frequently.
Constellation Foundation
The Microwave Sounder maps reveals temperature and moisture through clouds better than any other instrument. The rest of the constellation fills the blind spots it cannot.
THE FIVE INSTRUMENTS ARE ANNOUNCED. SEE WHAT THEY ARE BUILT FOR.
Book a demo of the platform DeepSky will feed, working today on the Gen-1 fleet, on the decisions your team actually makes.
