NASA’s INCUS Satellites Progress Toward Launch

One of the three satellites that make up NASA’s INCUS (Investigation of Convective Updrafts) mission sits on a fixture at the facilities of Blue Canyon Technologies in Lafayette, Colorado. The satellite completed testing in preparation for launch in late May 2026. The mission will make the first space-based survey of the dynamics of tropical convective storms.

The three nearly identical satellites will fly in tight coordination in low Earth orbit, with the first and second satellites separated by 30 seconds, and the second and third satellite separated by 90 seconds. 

Each satellites carries a radar designed to observe the vertical motion of air and water — known as convective mass flux — as storms develop and evolve. The middle satellite will also carry a microwave radiometer.

The INCUS mission is set to launch in 2027 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Funded through the Earth Venture Mission-3 acquisition under NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program and led by principal investigator Sue van den Heever at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, INCUS is one of several missions fulfilling the clouds, convection, and precipitation requirements of NASA’s Earth System Observatory, a set of interconnected missions set to study our home planet’s dynamic natural systems and how they interact. The mission is also part of FALCON (Fleet for the Atmosphere Linking Commercial Observations with NASA), a fleet of atmosphere-observing satellites that will combine hardware contributions from NASA centers, universities, and commercial partners.