GeoOptics is set to begin providing commercial satellite data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in March for numerical weather prediction efforts after the company received its first delivery order from the agency.
The company said Friday it will work to deliver 1,300 radio occultations to NOAA in real time each day using its constellation of Community Initiative for Continuous Earth Remote Observation satellites, also known as CICERO.
NOAA awarded GeoOptics and SpireGlobal separate two-year contracts worth $23M combined to support the Commercial Weather Data Pilot program.
The agency launched the CWDP effort to determine the viability of applying commercial satellite-based information to meteorological modeling and Earth observation tasks.
GeoOptics noted it aims to generate detailed images of Earth’s surface, subsurface and atmosphere with the company’s nanosatellites that employ Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation sensors.
Orbital Solutions Monaco and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems built the CICERO satellites while NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped produce the GNSS- RO sensor technology.
