CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation Mission

The main objective of the CubeRRT mission is to demonstrate the RFI mitigation technology on a flight-ready hardware in space, increasing the technology readiness level (TRL) from 6 to 7.

The CubeRRT (CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation) mission was selected under NASA's In-space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) program to demonstrate on-board, real-time RFI processing.

Over the past couple of decades passive microwave radiometry observations have shown an increase in man-made RF interference corrupting measured radiances and thus impacting geophysical retrievals. These man-made sources also known as Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) have impacted various geophysical retrievals such as soil-moisture, sea-surface salinity, wind-speed and wind-direction, atmospheric water-vapor, precipitation retrievals etc. The spectrum environment for passive microwave measurements is expected to become worse over the coming decades due to an increasing demand from the commercial industry.