Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, specifically the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, develops technology for detecting and discarding manmade Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) from Earth's naturally fluctuating microwave signals. This technology is imperative for future satellite missions using microwave radiometry to observe Earth’s properties. Their project, "CubeRRT: CubeSat Radiometer RFI Technology Validation," received $5.6 million from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to advance RFI reduction technology. CubeRRT is a 6U CubeSat designed to demonstrate RFI technologies for Earth-sensing microwave radiometers, enabling remote sensing of global properties like soil moisture, atmospheric water vapor, sea surface temperature, and sea surface winds. The university works in partnership with investigators from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. They also contributed similar technologies for NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. The CubeRRT satellite was launched aboard the OA-9 resupply mission to the ISS on May 21, 2018, and deployed from the International Space Station on July 13, 2018. Testing for CubeRRT was completed at Blue Canyon Technologies and integration was handled by NanoRacks. The university is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.