Status and Plans for Spire's Growing Commercial Constellation of GNSS Science CubeSats
Presenter:
Dallas Masters
Spire Global, Inc.
(1) Spire Global, Inc.; (2) A.M.Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics; (3) GPS Solutions, Inc.
Talk
In a relatively short time, Spire has grown from a small start-up company to the largest commercial producer of satellite-based GNSS Earth observation products. After 19 deployments, Spire now has 76 3U Cubesats satellites operating in a variety of orbit planes, second only to Planet in the size of its nanosatellite constellation and growing with each launch. Spire satellites host three primary payloads: a dual-frequency GNSS science receiver, an automatic identification system (AIS) receiver for ship tracking, and an automatic dependent surveillance—broadcast (ADS–B) receiver for aircraft tracking. The Earth observations produced with Spire’s GNSS science receiver include atmospheric profiles performed by radio occultation (RO) and space weather observations (slant total electron content (TEC) and scintillation indices) using signals from the GPS, GLONASS, QZSS, and Galileo constellations. Spire was the only company to produce RO observations in the first NOAA Commercial Weather Data Pilot program, and since then Spire has continued to improve and grow the size and capabilities of its RO constellation. Spire now produces thousands of RO profiles and millions of TEC observations each day, with plans to reach 10,000 daily profiles by 2020, and over 100 RO-producing satellites in the full constellation. Due to its agility and rapid launch cycle, averaging launches of four to eight satellites every six weeks, Spire has the unique ability to improve performance and add capabilities on-orbit that are impossible with traditional, risk-averse satellite missions. As an example, Spire recently added the capability to perform grazing angle GNSS bistatic radar observations (also known as “GNSS reflectometry” (GNSS-R)) to its existing RO satellites, and these observations are pioneering a new measurement technique that has the potential to observe sea ice draft and ocean surface heights with high precision. Spire is currently providing RO and space weather data to the second NOAA Commercial Weather Data Pilot program, the US Air Force Commercial Weather Data Pilot program, ESA, and numerous NWP centers and research institutions. Spire is also providing Earth observation data to NASA and ESA researchers through unique data purchase programs.
In this presentation, we will discuss the current status of GNSS science and products from Spire’s constellation of CubeSats, as well as plans for future development and expansion of Spire’s Earth observation program.
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