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Spire Global, Inc, the world’s largest space to cloud analytics company, has announced Spire’s most recently launched satellites are the first satellites in the world to use Galileo GNSS signals to measure radio occultation (GNSS-RO) profiles in a production capacity for the weather community.
This industry first was announced at The Morgan Stanley Space Summit in New York City, and will now be offered to the entire audience of Spire’s global user base as a new tier of data for advanced weather prediction.
These satellites are also part of a larger collaborative European Space Agency (ESA ) programme called ARTES Pioneer ‘Space As A Service’. The new satellite deployments represent the first Spire satellites launched through the Pioneer program for ESA, which is supported by the UK Space Agency.
Observing Galileo radio occultations now enables Spire’s weather observation satellites to harvest approximately 25% of the total GNSS-RO profiles available from the existing GNSS satellite constellations in orbit today.
This unrivaled capability was put into use just one week after launch, which not only demonstrates Spire’s ability to quickly get satellites into production but also illustrates the flexibility of Spire’s software and hardware chain to support fast updates. These satellites are developed, assembled, and tested at Spire’s centralized global production facility in Glasgow, Scotland.
“We exponentially increased the number and quality of payloads we have launched this year, more importantly, we are passionately committed to lead and inspire innovations in the business of earth observation,” said Peter Platzer, CEO, Spire Global, Inc.
Similar to the US Global Positioning System (GPS), the Galileo GNSS program is Europe’s initiative for a state-of-the-art global navigation satellite system, providing a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control. When complete in 2020, the full operational capability of the Galileo constellation will consist of 30 satellites.
Spire has become an industry standard in the commercial aerospace sector and operates one of the largest constellations of private nanosatellites and ground station networks in the world. The company has also launched strategic partnerships across a myriad of verticals, including deals with NASA, ESA and key players in the weather, maritime and aviation sectors.
