SeaWinds: the QuikSCAT wind scatterometer

The QuikSCAT wind scatterometer, named SeaWinds, is a scanning, pencil-beam, microwave radar that was designed to measure global ocean surface winds from space. Originally planned for flight aboard the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) Advanced Earth Observing Satellite II (ADEOS-II) spacecraft, SeaWinds was expected to continue the series of Ku-band scatterometer data initiated by the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT). Unfortunately, the failure of NSCAT's host spacecraft, ADEOS-I, prematurely ended NSCAT's mission and created a data gap. The QuikSCAT mission was rapidly developed to fill in the data gap between NSCAT on ADEOS-I and SeaWinds on ADEOS-II. A scatterometer nearly identical to SeaWinds was quickly assembled and launched on June 19, 1999 aboard the QuikSCAT spacecraft. In this paper, we describe the QuikSCAT mission, outline the key design features of the SeaWinds scatterometer, and mention some of the current and emerging science applications.