Mantis Society Study Center: News from #AMS2018 | NOAA could slash future communications costs if commercial services pan out

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

News from #AMS2018 | NOAA could slash future communications costs if commercial services pan out

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

NOAA could slash future communications costs if commercial services pan out

AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency may be able to slash the cost of transmitting data from its next generation of weather satellites by turning to commercial communications services.

That was one of the takeaways of the NOAA Satellite Observing System Architecture (NSOSA) study, an extensive analysis of spacecraft the agency will need once it completes its Joint Polar Satellite System and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) programs presented Jan. 10 at the American Meteorological Society meeting here.

"The net cost savings if one were to go with commercial services would be in the range of 40 to 60 percent," said Julian Breidenthal, senior system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. — Debra Werner

NASA Earth Science Division looks to Congress, Decadal Survey for direction

AUSTIN, Texas — Until Congress and the White House come to an agreement on the 2018 budget, NASA's Earth Science Division will not know how much money it will have to spend in fiscal year 2018 or the fate of five missions the Trump Administration recommended for termination.

Even if the division's 2018 budget mirrors the President Trump's proposal to cut NASA's Earth Science budget from its current level of about $1.9 billion to about $1.75 billion, "we have a broad portfolio of many missions on orbit and under development to launch between now and 2022," Mike Freilich, NASA Earth Science Division director, said Jan. 9 at the American Meteorological Society meeting here. "There would be a measurable impact but it would not be existential."

The Trump administration and House of Representatives have weighed in on cancelling the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem satellite, the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) 3, and Earth-viewing instruments on the Deep Space Climate Observatory, missions the Senate endorses. — Debra Werner

Spire Global is expanding cubesat constellation to offer persistent global view

AUSTIN, Texas — Spire Global, the San Francisco-based company that operates 48 GPS radio occultation cubesats, could provide a persistent view of about 97 percent of Earth with a constellation of 150 satellites, said Alexander "Sandy" MacDonald, Spire's global validation model director.

"It would be like a global GEO satellite and there are huge implications of that," MacDonald, former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, said Jan. 9 at the American Meteorological Society meeting here.

Spire is not alone in seeing the value of GPS radio occultation. NOAA and Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology are preparing to launch six Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) 2A satellites this year on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. GeoOptics of Pasadena, California, is another startup working to establish a constellation of GPS radio occultation satellites. — Debra Werner