A Decade of Spaceborne GNSS-R: Scientific Legacy of CYGNSS and the Emerging Multi-Mission Future
A Decade of Spaceborne GNSS-R: Scientific Legacy of CYGNSS and the Emerging Multi-Mission Future
Session ID#: 282963
Session Description:
December 2026 marks ten years since the launch of NASA's CYGNSS constellation, a milestone that coincides with GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) maturing from a pathfinder technique into an operational pillar of Earth observation. Over the past decade, spaceborne GNSS-R has delivered transformative advances well beyond its original tropical cyclone wind objectives, including soil moisture, flood inundation, wetland dynamics, above-ground biomass, ocean microplastics, sea ice, and freeze/thaw retrievals, supported by new calibration approaches, polarimetric and grazing-angle techniques, and machine-learning developments. The field is now entering a multi-mission era with missions such as HydroGNSS, Muon Space, Spire, TRITON, PRETTY, and other emerging signals-of-opportunity platforms.
This session invites contributions spanning the full breadth of GNSS-R science: retrospective analyses of long-record CYGNSS products, cross-mission calibration and intercomparison, novel algorithms and applications, early results from newly launched missions, and concepts for the next generation of bistatic Earth observation.
Co-Sponsor(s):
- A - Atmospheric Sciences
- C - Cryosphere
- NS - Near Surface Geophysics
- OS - Ocean Sciences
Index Terms:
0758 Remote sensing [CRYOSPHERE]
1821 Floods [HYDROLOGY]
1855 Remote sensing [HYDROLOGY]
4275 Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
Primary Convener: Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi, University of California Berkeley, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Berkeley, CA, United States
Conveners: Christopher S Ruf, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Climate and Space, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, Clara Chew, Muon Space, Mountain View, Ca, United States, Zhaoxia Pu, University of Utah, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Salt Lake City, UT, United States and Mahta Moghaddam, University of Southern California, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Student/Early Career Convener: Juan Crespo, University of California Los Angeles, JIFRESSE/NASA-JPL, Los Angeles, United States
See more of: Hydrology