The SeaWinds instrument, NASA's next generation El Nino monitoring device, has been shipped to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO for integration on to the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite.

QuikSCAT is due to launch in Spring 1999 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Titian II launch vehicle. It is the first major NASA sponsored Earth science mission to have a development time of approximately one year (from approval to launch) since the Explorer satellite in the late 1950's.

The SeaWinds instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite is a specialized microwave radar that measures both the speed and direction of winds near the ocean surface. Winds directly affect the turbulent exchanges of heat, moisture and greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and the ocean. Changes in the winds along the equator play a key role in the formation of the El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also supporting the mission and will use the data for improved weather forecasting and storm warning, especially hurricanes and typhoons.

SeaWinds on QuikSCAT will use a rotating dish antenna with two microwave beams and will radiate microwaves across 90 percent of the Earth's ice-free oceans every day. The instrument will collect wind-speed and wind direction data in a continuous 1,800 kilometer-wide (1118 mile-wide) band, making approximately 400,000 measurements each day.

The QuikSCAT mission will fill in the data gap created by the loss of the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) on the Japanese Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS).

JPL's NSCAT/SeaWinds Program Office has been assigned responsibility and provides overall Project management, as well as science, ground processing systems, and the SeaWinds instrument. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the satellite development which is being designed and fabricated by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Techonology.