Micronimbus: A cubesat temperature profilometer for the earth's atmosphere using a single-chip 60 GHZ sige radiometer

MicroNimbus is a 3U CubeSat spacecraft that uses a single-chip SiGe 60 GHz radiometer to measure the temperature profile of the Earth's atmosphere. Due to the characteristics of oxygen absorption around 60 GHz, by choosing different center frequencies and bandwidths, the radiometer can measure the temperature of the atmosphere at different altitudes, giving the temperature profile. The temperature profile is of interest to weather forecasters and workers in LIDAR, and laser communications, among others. The CubeSat's low cost would allow a constellation of such spacecraft to be deployed, yielding a continuous near-real-time 3-D map of the temperature profile of the Earth's atmosphere. MicroNimbus is currently in development at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and is expected to launch at the end of 2018.