Sue van den Heever to lead NASA’s $177M INCUS mission to study storms in the Tropics

NASA has announced a $177 million Earth science mission led by Colorado State University that will study the behavior of storms in the Tropics, with the goal of better representing these storms in weather and climate models.

The mission will be a collection of three small satellites, flying in tight coordination, and is called Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS). It is expected to launch in 2027 as part of NASA’s Earth Venture Program.

INCUS’ principal investigator is Susan van den Heever, professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science, whose expertise is in cloud physics, cloud dynamics, and mesoscale meteorology and modeling. The team includes Kristen Rasmussen, assistant professor in atmospheric science; and Steven Reising, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. CSU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere will perform data processing for the mission, overseen by Phil Partain.

Read the full Source article, “CSU atmospheric scientists lead $177 million NASA mission to study thunderstorms in the Tropics.”