Ohio State Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair, BPCRC member, and Professor, Joel Johnson, leads the development of NASA’s CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) project. As humans expand their technological presence across the globe, the growth of manmade radio transmissions is making it increasingly difficult to detect Earth's microwave radiation. This has required new advancements in radio frequency interference (RFI) technology to help separate the manmade signals from the natural.

Johnson and his team at Ohio State specialize in such technology. Ohio State is the only national university leading one of the four selected projects for NASA’s In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies, or InVEST, and is working in partnership with investigators from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA explained CubeRRT will help “observe, detect, and mitigate RFI” to better allow microwave radiometers to measure the Earth’s properties for climate science. Johnson said he expects the CubeRRT launch could happen in 2018. The Ohio State program is part of a larger NASA CubeSat initiative, which are satellites small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, or as big as a large shoebox, designed to test new technologies in space.

To learn more about this project, visit http://go.osu.edu/NASA-CubeRRT.