Microsatellites proposed for gathering weather data

Nature : A fleet of satellites first launched in 2006 has been providing valuable weather forecast and climate model data by picking up radio signals from GPS satellites. The signals get bent as they pass through Earth’s atmosphere, and the amount of bending indicates atmospheric temperature and moisture levels. But the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate is aging, and its expensive successor, the government-funded Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), which has already exceeded its planned budget, is not due to go up until 2016. To fill the gap, a commercial operation called GeoOptics is proposing the more budget-friendly Community Initiative for Cellular Earth Remote Observation (CICERO), a network of 24 microsatellites. Costing $150 million, compared with $12.9 billion for JPSS, CICERO would be built and launched with private funds; any data gathered would then be licensed to US government agencies and thus made freely available to researchers. “I would like to put the government out of the business of doing routine measurements and observations that could easily be done by a commercial company,” said Conrad Lautenbacher, chief executive of GeoOptics.