The commercial earth observation sector continues to expand its capabilities in providing technologies and services that are critical to daily life on our planet. Technologies from GeoOptics and others have improved the frequency and resolution of data, resulting in increasing accuracy in predicting, monitoring, and mitigating threats to our nation’s infrastructure, the environment, and critical industries. For example, measuring and monitoring the atmosphere, space weather, water, and drought are critical to government and private sector scientists, operations decision makers, climatologists, and other stakeholders in predicting weather systems and preparing for the impact of climate change.

It’s been an extradinordinary 2022 for our company which included the formation of GeoOptics’s unified Earth observatory that will allow governments, industry, and individual stakeholders to monitor and prepare for the many impacts of climate change. GeoOptics was awarded a contract to provide space weather data from its earth observation satellites for National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Commercial Weather Data Program.

In early November, GeoOptics was awarded a contract to provide NASA with the high-quality data from its radio occultation satellites for evaluation to determine their suitability for advancing NASA’s science and application goals. The data will be available for NASA researchers looking into climate change, weather, space weather, and other applications.

The GeoOptics teams in the U.S. and in Lausanne, Switzerland have been preparing for these expanded services and our ongoing work to ensure continued accuracy, timely monitoring and analysis of Earth observation data. This includes generating Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) data from our CICERO satellites and providing real-time monitoring data to government agencies and commercial customers around the globe.

2023 will hold countless new opportunities as we continue to develop advanced technologies and services that will expand capabilities even further.

We wish all our customers, partners, colleagues, friends, and families best wishes for the holidays and a prosperous New Year.

The world’s oceans cover more than 70 percent of our planet and contain 97 percent of the Earth’s water. Protecting, conserving, maintaining, and rebuilding our oceans and its ecosystems is critical to life today and to future generations. As part of this global effort and National Oceans Month, Oregon Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici introduced a bi-partisan sponsored congressional resolution, H. Res. 1158, committing to increasing investments in scientific research and monitoring to better understand our changing oceans. GeoOptics supports this important Resolution.

GeoOptics is committed to monitoring our oceans and freshwater resources. Our first CICERO-2 satellites launched last month and will study the world’s oceans in great detail, examining winds, waves, the atmopshere and the ocean surface.

GeoOptics was the first commercial satellite company to provide data to NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecasts and continues to work with NOAA and other agencies to improve forecasts around the world. Taking care of the health and welfare of our oceans and waterways is critical, and commercial satellite technologies are leading the way.

GeoOptics founder, Tom Yunck, participated in the recent National Academy of Sciences workshop on its report, Leveraging Commercial Space for Earth and Ocean Remote Sensing, emphasizing the commercial satellite capabilities that exist today and technologies on the horizon.

A global leader in Earth remote sensing, GeoOptics announced its expansion in Europe, with founder and chief technology officer, Tom Yunck, relocating to Lausanne, Switzerland, to manage GeoOptics Switzerland SA. The new subsidiary and team of data scientists represent a key component of GeoOptics plans to enhance their commercial satellite services around the globe.

“As a pioneer in commercial remote sensing data services, GeoOptics supports decision makers, research groups, and individual users worldwide,” Yunck noted. “Our European office will help us better serve an international base of government and civil customers with the most accurate, timely data available.”

GeoOptics has a new generation of satellites under construction in Italy as part of its long-term partnership with a leader in global satellite solutions. The first two next-generation spacecraft are due to launch in Summer 2022.

“Our strategic satellite manufacturing partnership enables GeoOptics to provide advanced solutions, increased data accuracy, and expanded capabilities from global navigation satellite systems around the globe,” said Alex Saltman, Chief Executive Officer of GeoOptics.

The company also announced today the rollout of Galileo-derived radio occultation data on its current and future satellites, marking the first availability of high accuracy, commercial RO data from the European positioning system. Combined with RO data derived from GPS and GLONASS, GeoOptics continues to offer the highest quality commercial RO data in the world.

Finally, GeoOptics announced a radio occultation (RO) data testing program with EUMETSAT, the European operational satellite agency for monitoring weather, climate, and the environment. EUMETSAT atmospheric data scientists continue to provide strategic feedback and positive reviews on GeoOptics RO data, echoing previous analysis from NOAA. The collaboration will allow EUMETSAT and European meteorological agencies to examine the data.

In July, GeoOptics announced a major upgrade to its CICERO constellation of satellites. With launches beginning next year, CICERO 2 will form a unified Earth observatory allowing stakeholders around the globe – including governments, industry, and individuals — to monitor and prepare for the growing impacts of climate change.

First time NOAA has purchased commercial satellite data to be used in operational forecasts

GeoOptics is pleased to announce it has received the inaugural order to provide commercial radio occultation data for NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. GeoOptics will begin near-real-time data deliveries in March, with 1300 occultations per day meeting NOAA’s stringent data quality, latency and reliability requirements.

“With strong support from Congress, NOAA has developed pioneering programs to include innovative, commercial data sources in its core forecast products,” said GeoOptics CEO Conrad Lautenbacher. “After several years of technology development, testing and program formulation, NOAA’s commitment to operational use of commercial satellite data in safety-critical weather forecasts is a significant milestone for the commercial satellite data industry. We are delighted to be the partner NOAA chose to initiate this stage of its Commercial Data Purchase program.”

“GeoOptics was founded by working scientists and engineers, in response to an increasingly urgent need for actionable information about the state of our planet, our changing climate and the impacts of human activity on quality of life and on Earth’s future,” said GeoOptics CTO and Founder Tom Yunck. “A commitment to public partnership and service to science is the foundational principle of the company.”

“We are cognizant of the responsibility this role entails and are dedicated to being a reliable partner to NOAA for many years to come,” said GeoOptics COO Alex Saltman. “This award further demonstrates that GeoOptics is providing the most accurate radio occultation data on the market, at the best price.”

GeoOptics’ mission is to provide the most detailed picture possible of our planet’s atmosphere, surface and subsurface to scientific users around the world. We have embarked on our mission with our first constellation of nanosatellites, known as CICERO – Community Initiative for Continuous Earth Remote Observation. The first operational satellites, built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems and Orbital Solutions Monaco (OSM), carry advanced Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) sensors developed in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

With our initial CICERO satellites on-orbit, building on a 25-year JPL heritage, GeoOptics is providing the most accurate commercial radio occultation data from space. Satellites now in work will expand upon and refine this capability and deploy other technologies to provide a comprehensive picture of the Earth’s environment.

GeoOptics, Inc. (GeoOptics) announced today the launch of an original radio occultation data processing system called the GeoOptics Processor for Radio Occultation (GeoPRO) that provide even more accurate and timely weather data from its CICERO constellation of radio occultation (RO) satellites. CICERO nanosatellites are designed to create the most detailed picture ever assembled of the Earth’s ionosphere and atmosphere.

For many years, detailed scientific analyses of radio occultation data have used a precise processing method called “phase-matching” to produce the most accurate radio occultation profiles possible. However, this method was generally considered too resource intensive for use in real-time data processing for operational weather modeling and forecasting.

GeoOptics has developed GeoPRO as a real-time phase-matching processing system built around the on-demand parallelism enabled by serverless cloud-computing services, sometimes referred to as “Serverless Supercomputing.” By optimizing the processing system and running it on massively parallel serverless infrastructure, GeoPRO enables near-real-time phase-matching processing of large quantities of radio occultation data.

Traditionally the processing of radio occultation data has been undertaken in a batch processing mode in which relatively large chunks of data are processed together and then released. However, as the number of GeoOptics satellites and ground stations increases, data will arrive much more frequently, requiring a different mode of operations to minimize data latency and maximize utility. GeoPRO is designed to make that transition possible.

GeoOptics Processor for Radio Occultation (GeoPRO) produces spectrograms that reveal the disintegration of the dual-frequency raw radio occultation signal at lower altitudes. The red areas are signals reaching the receiver after passing through the atmosphere. The dashed line is the processed atmospheric bending angle on each frequency generated by GeoPRO.

Data from the new processing system have been made available to scientists around the world and GeoOptics commercial data partners. Due to the accuracy of the data processing and the quality of the Cion receiver, the data exhibits remarkably low bias even in warm air near the Earth’s surface, where lower quality radio occultation data often suffers from uncontrolled biases. Research has shown that this degree of accuracy in the lower atmosphere is vital for forecasting hurricanes and other high-impact weather events.

“We’re excited to provide our newly refined data to customers who depend on getting the most timely and precise weather data possible,” said Alex Saltman, Chief Operating Officer and architect of the new processing system. “We’re leveraging new technologies across our satellites, ground systems and now data processing to deliver best-in-class data as a service to our government and commercial customers.”

GeoOptics’ mission is to provide the most detailed picture possible of our planet’s atmosphere, surface and subsurface to our customers as well as scientific users around the world. We have embarked on our mission with our first constellation of nanosatellites, known as CICERO – Community Initiative for Cellular Earth Remote Observation. The first operational satellites contain advanced Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) sensors developed in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

With our initial CICERO satellites on-orbit, GeoOptics is now providing the first and only high-quality commercial radio occultation data from space. Satellites now in work will expand upon and refine this capability and deploy other technologies to provide a comprehensive picture of the Earth’s environment.