Based out of Colorado State University, the Investigation of Cloud Updrafts, or INCUS, is a mission meant to better understand and predict storms that lead to severe weather where people’s lives are at risk and property could be destroyed. But President Trump’s 2026 NASA budget request says that to achieve cost savings, the INCUS venture class mission won’t continue and will close out next year.
Sue van den Heever is steering the mission and is the first woman to lead a NASA Earth venture mission. Here in Colorado, we’ve seen dangerous and damaging storms, especially with hail along the Front Range and the Eastern Plains. “I like to compare storms to people. Their storms have a lot of different personalities or characteristics, and the storms we’re interested in are very dynamic,” she says.
So far, scientists’ ability to study and predict severe weather has been limited to radar on the ground. Until now.
INCUS is based on CSU’s Foothills Campus. Van den Heever’s work is done out of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at CSU, but NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is implementing the mission…