Catalyst: Seeding award to build a partnership with NASA JPL

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +1200

A Catalyst: Seeding project, Bridging CMOS and Photonic Spectroscopy for Stratospheric Water Vapour Measurements, establishes a formal research collaboration between the University of Otago and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Harald Schwefel is principal investigator, with Dr Subash Khanal of NASA JPL as co-applicant. Annika Seppälä leads the atmospheric science, Mallika Suresh the photonic science, and Randy Pollock the systems engineering. On the JPL side the project also draws on Dr Adrian Tang, who directs JPL’s Space System-on-Chip programme, and Dr Nathaniel Livesey, who led the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder for nearly two decades and sits on Tuwhiri’s advisory board.

Catalyst:Seeding is administered by the Royal Society Te Apārangi on behalf of MBIE. It funds the building of international research relationships rather than the research those relationships go on to produce, which is exactly what is needed here.

Why water vapour

Tuwhiri’s instrument was conceived for ozone. Water vapour is a natural second target: the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, closely tied to atmospheric circulation, extreme weather and ozone recovery — and poorly observed in the stratosphere, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption made the gap plain. It injected an unprecedented quantity of water vapour into the stratosphere, and the observing system was not well placed to track what followed.

Ozone and water vapour sensing share their physical principles but differ in frequency and in what calibration demands. Extending the photonic approach from one to the other is a real piece of work, not a relabelling.

Benchmarking against a proven instrument

Laboratory validation only takes a millimetre-wave spectrometer so far. At some point it has to be measured against an instrument whose behaviour is already understood.

JPL has a compact, flight-proven CMOS spectrometer operating at the 183 GHz water line. The project’s aim over two years is technical alignment — workshops, research exchanges and joint engineering studies — working towards flying the two sensors side by side on a Kea Aerospace Kea Atmos stratospheric aircraft. Measuring the same air at the same moment with a new instrument and an established one is the most credible way to find out what the new one can actually do.

That is a rare opportunity. It also reduces the risk carried by everything Tuwhiri builds afterwards.

Millimeter-Wave Atmospheric Radiometry via Nonlinear Optical Upconversion

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1300

H. Randy Pollock |

Catalyst: Seeding award to build a partnership with NASA JPL

Why water vapour

Benchmarking against a proven instrument

Millimeter-Wave Atmospheric Radiometry via Nonlinear Optical Upconversion