More than a decade ago, engineers from our Aerospace/Communications Division (A/CD) anticipated the future of weather forecasting. Ignoring the conventional wisdom that it couldn’t be done, they began working to develop sophisticated, sensitive interferometers that could withstand the violence of a space launch and operate reliably over the long, 15-year lifespan of weather satellite missions.

It was a bold move because the key customers didn’t reach the same conclusion until 1997.

“By the time NASA and the U.S. military decided that there had to be a way to get earthbound interferometers into space, we had already built prototypes,” says Ron Glumb, lead system engineer at A/CD.

The A/CD team’s leap of faith has led to a quantum leap forward in weather forecasting technology. CrIS, or the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder, uses space-ready interferometers to gather temperature and moisture readings 100 times more detailed than the current weather satellite technology.

It’s one of the key components of the National Polarorbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). With this program, which has been called a “national priority,” the U.S. military and civilian weather programs are consolidating their efforts into a single satellite system. When the first satellite launches in 2006, it will circle the earth, pole to pole, and use CrIS technology to gather data for the most accurate global weather forecasts ever available.

Like seeing candlelight from a thousand miles away, CrIS can read even the smallest variations in the earth’s energy levels. It’s the latest milestone in A/CD’s unbroken heritage of weather-forecasting breakthroughs.

“We’ve been onboard every key U.S. civilian weather satellite ever launched,” says Glumb, “and now with CrIS, we’re part of a program that will provide the world’s weather predictions for the next two decades.”