The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum now displays a model of a microsatellite operated by Boulder’s Southwest Research Institute — one that’s helped better predict tropical storms and hurricanes.

A model of the Southwest Research Institute’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System is now part of a permanent exhibit at the museum in Washington, D.C. CYGNSS consists of eight microsatellites, each weighing about 55 pounds and roughly the size of a piece of carry-on luggage.

The microsatellites gather near-real-time data to predict tropical storms and hurricanes to improve weather forecasting. Data from CYGNSS has been used to track flooding in Houston, locust migrations in Africa and soil moisture in New Zealand.

“CYGNSS is a big part of the small satellite revolution, and I always say we’re small but mighty,” Boulder-based CYGNSS Project Manager Jillian Redfern said in a release. “It was remarkable to start seeing CYGNSS data used in so many scientific studies, including tracking locust migrations in Africa, microplastics in oceans and wildfires. We’re very proud of how productive these little satellites have proven to be in the last decade.”

Launched in 2016, CYGNSS is designed to make frequent measurements of ocean surface winds and to monitor the location, intensity, size and development of tropical cyclones, according to the release. Flying in formation, the spacecraft cover a swath that passes over most of the Earth’s hurricane-producing zone — between 35 degrees north and 35 degrees south of the equator.

The model is displayed in the museum’s “RTX Living in the Space Age” exhibit, which showcases the evolution of spacecraft over several decades. Other models included in the exhibit are the Hubble Space Telescope, Skylab, Standard Missile-3 and several generations of extravehicular activity spacesuits. SwRI assembled the display model from leftover spare parts from the original CYGNSS mission and engineering model components.

The CYGNSS satellites are still active. SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration division in Boulder hosts the mission operations center, which commands the spacecraft, collects the telemetry and transmits the data to the science operations center at the University of Michigan.

Click here to get Boulder news directly to your inbox.