NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Multiscale Observing System of the Ocean Surface (MOSES) is an aerial observing system that was developed jointly at UCLA and Ifremer (France). It is a relatively low-cost package that includes off-the-shelf cameras, combined with accurate Applanix IMU/GPS to provide geo-referenced observations of the ocean surface. The primary camera in the system is a FLIR A6751 SLS longwave infrared camera, providing measurements of sea surface temperature at a resolution of several meters.

The Modular Aerial Sensing System (MASS) is a compact airborne sensor package of optical remote sensing instrumentation that is coupled to a tactical grade inertial navigation system. The system includes a waveform scanning lidar; visible, infrared, and hyperspectral imaging systems; and an infrared pyrometer.

NASA’s DopplerScatt instrument (Rodriguez et al., 2018) provides simultaneous measurements of ocean vector winds and surface currents estimates over a 24-km swath. The surface currents are used to compute surface convergence and vorticity. Winds are used to investigate air-sea interaction and to estimate the wind-driven current component.

DopplerScatt uses a pencil-beam mechanically scanning antenna that measures surface radar cross sections and radial Doppler velocities that are processed to estimate ocean vector winds and currents concurrently. The instrument operates at Ka-band (35.75 GHz), allowing for a compact antenna accommodation using waveguide slot array technology (22 cm diameter) protected by the RF-transparent radome (Fig. 3.1). The antenna rotation enables wide swath coverage (24 km when flying at 28 kft) as well as looks in multiple azimuth directions allowing the recovery of vector winds and surface currents at 200 m spatial resolution. Unlike traditional scatterometers, the radar operates coherently allowing for Doppler measurements of the relative velocity between the platform and the surface. DopplerScatt includes a precision Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) coupled with the Applanix GPS receiver which enables accurate motion compensation and removal of the platform velocity for retrieval of the surface velocity component.

DopplerScatt was developed under NASA Earth Science and Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) and NASA AITT.