Vietnamese students design $400 satellite to expose turbulence even radar can't detect

By Thanh Hang   March 17, 2026 | 06:05 pm GMT+7

(From L) Dao Minh Khoa, Hoang Lam Tai, Tran Quoc Minh and Tran Trieu Giang, four high school students in Ho Chi Minh City whose design won first prize at ASCEND, the first satellite design competition held in Vietnam, on March 7, 2026. Photos courtesy of the students

Four Vietnamese high school students have designed a satellite that could detect clear-air turbulence, the invisible atmospheric phenomenon that causes aircraft to shake violently without warning and cannot be picked up by conventional weather radar.

The students' project, named HALO V1, uses a small 1U CubeSat equipped with GNSS Radio Occultation technology to detect disturbances in the atmosphere and relay early warnings to aircraft in affected areas. The design won first prize at ASCEND, the first satellite design competition held in Vietnam, on March 7.

The team will now travel to Kazakhstan in April, where their satellite will be launched to an altitude of 20 km.

Clear-air turbulence occurs when invisible bodies of air moving at different speeds collide, typically at cruising altitudes between 7,000 and 12,000 meters. Unlike turbulence caused by storms, it produces no visual cues and generates no radar returns, leaving pilots with virtually no advance warning.

The phenomenon has caused fatal accidents, most recently drawing global attention after a Singapore Airlines flight encountered severe clear-air turbulence in 2024, killing one passenger and injuring dozens.

Tran Quoc Minh, the team leader and a student at Wellspring Bilingual School, said the group became interested in the problem after learning that traditional weather radar is effectively blind to the phenomenon.

"It's invisible, but it can be extremely dangerous," Minh said. "We wanted to find a way to give pilots an early warning."

The team's solution relies on a well-established atmospheric sensing technique. GNSS Radio Occultation works by intercepting GPS signals from orbiting navigation satellites as those signals pass through the atmosphere.

Under normal conditions, the atmosphere bends and slows the radio waves in predictable ways. But when the signals pass through a turbulence zone, their frequency is altered. By measuring these disturbances, the satellite can pinpoint the location and intensity of turbulence and relay that data to the ground for distribution to airlines.

The technique has been used in weather forecasting and climate research for decades through programs like the U.S.-Taiwanese COSMIC satellite constellation, and published research has explored its potential for turbulence detection. The students' innovation was to apply the concept in a low-cost CubeSat format aimed specifically at providing real-time turbulence warnings.

Minh said the production cost of a single satellite would be about $400. The team's business model envisions selling turbulence location data to airlines, flight operators and meteorological research agencies, while also publishing atmospheric condition reports for specific regions.

The four Ho Chi Minh City students, including Tran Trieu Giang from Le Quy Don High School, Hoang Lam Tai from Nguyen Thi Minh Khai High School and Dao Minh Khoa from the Australian International School, went through six weeks of online training in programming, electronics and sensor systems before building the satellite design over several more weeks.

The learning curve was steep. At one point, the team mistakenly configured an antenna for transmitting rather than receiving, preventing it from picking up any signals.

"We had to fix things step by step, bit by bit," Minh said.

Pham Yen, an ASCEND judge and STEM program manager at Phenikaa School, said she was impressed by the team's comprehensive approach, from hardware and software design through to a commercialization strategy.

In the national finals in Hanoi, only Minh was able to attend due to exam conflicts among the other members, but Yen said he handled difficult questions confidently.

"That shows the team was well prepared and the representative had a solid grasp of the knowledge," she said.

At the international finals in Kazakhstan, the team will build and launch their satellite as part of International Space Day 2026, organized with the support of the Kazakhstan government's Aerospace Committee. Going forward, the students hope to continue refining their design and find opportunities to test it in Vietnam.