Pat Shingleton for June 29, 2012

Since 1990, hurricane landfall predictions have improved 50 percent, but predicting the strength of the storm, before landfall, remains questionable. NASA has selected San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute to build eight tracking satellites to probe the inner core of hurricanes in greater detail to understand their rapid intensification. Each satellite is about the size of four breadboxes. When they deploy their solar panels, they expand to the size of full-grown swans. Expected launch dates are early 2016, creating the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, or CYGNSS, from the Latin word for swan. Former satellites were the size of cars . These satellites utilize less than a 50-watt light bulb as they collect “bounced” ocean signals from other satellites, and could eventually replace sea buoys. Fastcast: Hazy.