Space Sciences

Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR), continued

CCAR has integrated the research and learning environments through a wide range of research projects involving technical support from undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students; post-doctoral fellows, and professional staff. This technical expertise is coupled with extensive in-house computational facilities and collaboration with other universities, private industry, and government laboratories, enabling CCAR to provide research support in a variety of areas.

Examples include development and application of precision orbit determination for a U.S./French oceanographic satellite mission; specialized ocean circulation modeling; extraction of ocean signal from satellite altimeter and radiometer data; mapping of terrestrial vegetation changes; and use of the Global Positioning System for satellite attitude and orbit determination, and measurement of sea level and ocean currents using ocean buoys.

A new area of research for CCAR is the use of GPS signals reflected from the ocean surface to determine wind speed, direction, and ocean topography. We also are researching the use of GPS reflected signals for determining soil moisture and sea ice conditions. A collaborative proposal between the University of Colorado, the University of Texas at Austin, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to fly a satellite called SuRGE (Student Reflected GPS Experiment) has been submitted to NASA. If funded, this proof of concept mission will have as its objective the demonstration of useful measurements of the above geophysical parameters from space.

http://www-ccar.colorado.edu