News from #AMS2018 | Air Force to bolster weather capabilities with small satellites and sensors

Thursday, January 11, 2018 View this email in your browser Air Force to bolster weather capabilities with small satellites and sensors AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. Air Force's future weather satellite plans are beginning to take shape but are centered around enhancing information technology, cybersecurity and small satellites in the near term rather than a new generation of large, sophisticated spacecraft to replace the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. That's largely due to budget constraints and the fact that accurate forecasting, while critical to military operations, is not the service's primary mission, according to current and former government officials who asked not to be quoted. "In a competition between buying a few extra F-35s or weather satellites, there's no question," one official said. Nevertheless, the Air Force is moving ahead with plans to buy satellites to fulfill its requirements for microwave, electro-optical and infrared observations. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center awarded Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. a contract in November to build two satellites equipped with passive microwave imaging radiometers and Energetic Charged Particle sensors to send into low Earth orbit. The Air Force plans to include Energetic Charged Particle sensors on all future satellites to enhance its space weather observations. — Debra Werner NOAA's future constellation: large and small satellites in variety of orbits AUSTIN, Texas – In the future, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may rely on a mix of large government owned and operated satellites, imaging instruments hosted on commercial satellites, small satellites in low Earth orbit and data purchased from commercial firms. That was one of the key findings of an extensive quantitative analysis NOAA's Satellite and Information Service performed over the last two years to identify ways to create an increasingly capable and resilient space-based architecture in light of budget constraints. The NOAA Satellite Observing System Architecture (NSOSA) study evaluated about 100 possible constellations, ranging from continuing its existing model of relying almost exclusively on a handful of large government owned and operated satellites to radical alternatives with swarms of small satellites. — Debra Werner Aerospace Corp. warns of terrestrial interference with critical satellite services AUSTIN, Texas — During Hurricane Harvey, the Army Corps of Engineers shared data on water levels rising behind Houston's Addicks and Barker reservoirs through gauges that send information to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) for rebroadcast to emergency managers. Those rebroadcasts were transmitted at frequencies of 1675 and 1680 MHz, an area of the electromagnetic spectrum the Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration have traditionally reserved for satellite services. In response to growing demand by terrestrial communications firms, the FCC and NTIA are considering a proposal that would allow wireless towers to transmit information in the same frequency range. In a paper slated for release Jan. 11 at the American Meteorological Society meeting here, "Bracing for Impact: Terrestrial Radio Interference to Satellite-Based Services," Tom Powell, Dave Lubar and Karen Jones of The Aerospace Corp. warn that powerful terrestrial signals in the 1675 to 1680 MHz bands could interfere with receivers designed to track the much weaker signals transmitted by navigation and meteorology satellites. — Debra Werner Copyright © 2018 SpaceNews Inc., All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: SpaceNews Inc. 1414 Prince St, Suite 204 Alexandria, VA 22314