Scientists at the Swindon-based Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have been granted government funding to develop a first-of-its-kind climate monitoring instrument.

With the UK Space Agency funding, STFC’s RAL Space at Harwell in Oxfordshire will develop a pre-prototype of this new kind of sensor, which will be small enough to fly on board a nano-satellite.

The Hyperspectral Microwave Sounder (HYMS) is set to transform the future of weather forecasting. It has achieved four times greater sensitivity than sounder technology on board the current generation of meteorological satellites, and a hardware footprint 50-fold smaller.