Radar Cluster for Earth Remote Sensing, or RaCERS for short, is a swarm of eight small satellites that will fly in close formation to exploit the enormous power of cooperating radars to boost the quantity and resolution of Earth observations from space. This will transform the science of environmental monitoring and forecasting of natural disasters, severe weather, snow/ice cover, soil moisture, vegetation canopy, surface winds, ocean circulation and much more.
ESA is helping to fund a mission concept study for this idea, proposed by a consortium led by GeoOptics Switzerland. RaCERS is one of the seven selected ideas of ESA Preparation's open call for innovative new mission concepts enabled by CubeSat swarms. Read more about the selected ideas here.