VIENNA, Va. (Spire Global PR) — Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) (“the Company” or “Spire”), a leading provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, today announced it has been awarded the next order to provide commercial radio occultation (RO) weather data for the National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration’s (NOAA) operational Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. The order represents the largest volume of commercial weather data purchased to date by NOAA under the Commercial Weather Data Buy Program.

This purchase comes as NOAA has stated its intention to purchase increasing volumes of commercial RO data. The data provided by Spire will increase the volume of RO data available for assimilation into the national weather prediction models, improving the accuracy of those models and decreasing uncertainty in weather forecasting.

DARMSTADT, Germany (EUMETSAT PR) — Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, is launching an innovative pilot programme to buy, for the first time, data from a commercial satellite fleet operator for use in weather forecasting.

EUMETSAT’s governing council has approved the acquisition of data from Spire Global Luxembourg S.a.r.l. at a maximum cost of €9 million [US $10.6 million] over three years.

EUMETSAT will receive the data, called radio occultation data, from Spire, process it, and disseminate it for use in weather forecast modelling.

Satellites Will Track Earth’s Atmosphere, Water, Surface, and Interior

PASADENA, Calif. (GeoOptics PR) – A leader in Earth remote sensing, GeoOptics Inc., today announceda major upgrade to its CICERO constellation of satellites to measure our evolving planet. With launches beginning next year, CICERO-2 will form a unified Earth observatory allowing governments, industry, and individual stakeholders to monitor and prepare for the many impacts of climate change.

“In today’s environment, in which precision Earth sensing is becoming ever more critical, GeoOptics is deploying a flexible observatory made up of dozens of small satellites. The real time services will satisfy a broad range of needs for government and civil users around the world,” said Alex Saltman, Chief Executive Officer of GeoOptics.

New task order continues delivery of comprehensive space data and opens availability to all U.S. Government-funded researchers and federal agencies

VIENNA, Va. & RESTON, Va. (Spire Global PR) — Spire Global, Inc. (“Spire” or “the Company”), a leading global provider of space-based data and analytics, has announced the continuation of its participation in NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program with a six-million-dollar contract extension. The contract continuation, Task Order 6 (TO6), is a subscription data solution that includes radio occultation (RO) data, grazing angle GNSS-RO, total electron content (TEC) data, precise orbit determination (POD) data, soil moisture and ocean surface wind speed GNSS-Reflectometry data, and magnetometer data. This data will be available to all federal agencies, NASA-funded researchers and, more broadly, to all U.S. Government-funded researchers for scientific purposes.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

The United States reclaimed the top spot in launches from China last year as NASA astronauts flew into orbit from American soil for the first time in nearly nine years, SpaceX deployed the world’s first satellite mega-constellation with reused rockets, and two new launchers debuted with less than stellar results.

American companies conducted 44 launches in 2020, with 40 successes and four failures. Bryce Tech reports that U.S. companies accounted for 32 of the 41 commercial launches conducted last year. The majority of those flights were conducted by SpaceX, which launched 25 orbital missions.

China came in second with a record of 35 successful launches and four failures. The 39 launch attempts tied that nation’s previous record for flights during a calendar year.

Let’s take a closer look at what U.S. companies achieved last year.

Partnership will Accelerate Growth of Newly Launched High-Resolution Weather Solutions Platform, Filling Critical Coverage Gaps in Existing Radar Networks

SAN FRANCISCO & FORT WORTH, Texas & LOUISVILLE, Ky.–(Rise Fund/Climavision PR)–The Rise Fund, TPG’s global impact investing platform, today announced a $100 million strategic investment in Climavision, a pioneering weather services and intelligence platform powered by a private network of high-resolution radars, GPS-RO data, and proprietary software to vastly improve the timing and accuracy of weather forecasting and to fill low-level gaps in existing weather surveillance.

Climavision was formed out of Enterprise Electronics Corporation (EEC), the world’s largest privately held commercial supplier of weather radar systems. EEC, which is majority controlled by the Cookes family, has a 50-year history and more than 1,200 installations across 95 countries. By combining lower altitude, proprietary data with cutting-edge machine learning and AI technology, Climavision’s one-of-a-kind offering provides 10x higher resolution and more accurate forecasting to address critical coverage gaps left by existing radar networks across the U.S.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 9, 2021 (Redwire PR) – Redwire, a new leader in mission critical space solutions and high reliability components for the next generation space economy, has been selected by PlanetiQ, a commercial weather satellite constellation operator, to supply solar arrays for their HD GPS-RO weather satellites. The contract will include delivery of a 130-watt solar array for PlanetiQ’s spacecraft. The agreement marks PlanetiQ’s third flight contract for Redwire’s solar arrays. Previously, Redwire’s subsidiary Roccor delivered two sets of solar arrays to PlanetiQ, dating back to 2018. 

SILVER SPRING, Md. (NOAA PR) — On February 19, 2021, NOAA awarded Delivery Order 2 (DO-2) under its existing Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts for radio occultation (RO) data to GeoOptics.

Through DO-2, NOAA will purchase 1300 occultations per day for six months from March to September, with a license to share the data with U.S. government agencies immediately upon receipt and to share on a full and open basis after 24 hours. Following verification of data and system readiness, NOAA plans to begin incorporating commercial RO data into operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models in May.

NOAA has awarded Spire Global and GeoOptics contracts worth a combined $23 million to provide radio occultation data from satellites the agency will use to improve its weather forecasting. Under the two-year Commercial Weather Data Operational Buy contracts, the companies’ satellites will measure how Global Navigation Satellite System radio signals bend as they travel through the atmosphere. NOAA will use data collected on temperatures, pressure and water vapor to better model […]

The European Vega rocket that launched this evening was carrying 53 satellites on its first rideshare mission as part of the Small Spacecraft Mission Service Proof of Concept Flight.

The payloads included 14 Flock 4V Earth imaging satellites from Planet, 12 SpaceBEE Internet of Things spacecraft from Swarm Technologies, and 8 maritime monitoring satellites from Spire.