Proposal: Many people died during the massive destruction of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Satellites provide meteorologists worldwide information on developing weather patterns. Meteorologists are trying to develop new methods of detecting and predicting storms. Better predictions of a storm's path and intensity will immensely help with evacuations and save money.
Our team will design a system of satellites, Near Earth RaDar Satellites (NERDS), to collect data on hurricanes and tropical storms. Our satellite system will use cloud profiling radars similar to that on NASA's CloudSat to measure the rain fall, and ice content within existing and developing storms. We will place the satellites such that they can cover a wide range of the Earth's surface. We will determine the number of satellites needed to collect enough data to improve hurricane predictions. Our team plans to plot satellites orbits using the program Satellite Tool Kit (STK) and use the C++ programming language to determine where to best point the radars.

Team Members:

  Vivek Prinja
  Alessandra Anderson
  Kaitlyn Hughes
  Matthew Scharmer

Sponsoring Teacher: Neil McBeth

Mail the entire Team