Ready for Launch: Pioneering Israeli-German Satellite Expected to Revolutionize 3D Cloud Mapping for Climate Research
The satellite was designed and built במסגרת an international research collaboration supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant. The project brings together the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Technion, and the Center for Telematics in Germany.
The first miniature satellite of an Israeli-German scientific satellite constellation (CloudCT) has been built, tested, and prepared for launch from California. The launch is expected to take place this coming June. The success of this pioneering mission is expected to lead to the launch of 10 additional CloudCT satellites next year and significantly advance research into clouds and their role in the climate system.
The satellite is the result of seven years of intensive joint research conducted by Israeli and German scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science (led by Ilan Koren), the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (led by Yoav Schechner), and the Center for Telematics (led by Klaus Schilling). This achievement was made possible through the prestigious ERC Synergy Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). Discoveries made by the international research team regarding AI-based tomographic observation methods, cloud physics, and advanced satellite technologies have been published in leading scientific journals.
“The mission focuses on an in-depth study of small clouds, which are often not detected by current remote sensing technologies,” says Professor Ilan Koren, a world-renowned expert in atmospheric and climate research. “The mission addresses major sources of uncertainty that currently limit long-term climate models and forecasts.”
Following in-orbit testing, this pathfinder satellite will evaluate its innovative sensing technology from space. The satellite weighs only about four kilograms and must autonomously orient itself toward specific cloud fields. “Precise alignment and coordination between ten miniature satellites flying in formation in space present significant challenges for guidance and control systems of such small scale,” explains Professor Klaus Schilling, President of the Center for Telematics and an expert in small satellite development. “This is the key to autonomous formation flying.”
The research team developed an entirely new observation approach inspired by medical CT (computed tomography). The system maps in three dimensions the properties and internal structures of clouds, including unprecedented measurements of cloud droplet microphysics. The approach uses AI and enables scientists to estimate the reliability of the reconstructed mapping.
“Optical CT imaging of clouds requires simultaneous imaging from many directions in space using a unique camera,” says Professor Yoav Schechner, an expert in computational imaging from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion. “The camera is sensitive to light polarization: polarization is invisible to the human eye, but it provides information about cloud droplets. The camera was developed specifically for CloudCT, and we will test its performance in space during the upcoming mission.”
In the photo: Vadim Kholodovsky and Professor Yoav Schechner.
