SAN FRANCISCO - Weather Stream, a Boulder, Colorado-based commercial weather satellite operator with a name that sounds like a streaming service for meteorology nerds, has released first light imagery from its GEMS2-Amethyst satellite. Launched March 30 aboard the SpaceX Transporter 16 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, the satellite is equipped with a commercial microwave radiometer that provides 3D atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles. Because apparently, knowing what the weather is doing in three dimensions is better than just sticking your head out the window.
“Weather affects everything,” Weather Stream founder and CEO Michael Hurowitz said in a statement, stating the obvious with the confidence of a man who knows we all nod along anyway. “From forecasting severe storms to supporting military operations to helping the insurance industry assess risk, the observation gaps we are filling with GEMS2-Amethyst touch decisions that billions of people depend on every day.”
Government agencies like NOAA and the U.S. Air Force have already awarded contracts to encourage companies like Weather Stream to build and deploy these instruments. On June 18, NOAA awarded a $2.7 million contract to Orbital Micro Systems, a Weather Stream subsidiary, and a $7.3 million contract to Boston-based Tomorrow.io to assess the quality and impact of commercial microwave sounder data on NOAA forecast models and tropical cyclone forecasting. The goal, according to a NOAA news release, is that successful studies will lead to sustained commercial data purchases. In other words, they want to buy the weather data, not just borrow it.
“Government agencies will be the primary customers for the microwave brightness temperature data from the GEMS2-Amethyst mission,” Hurowitz said by email, adding that they also have commercial customers in transportation, insurance, energy, and mining industries. “We will have an open-data policy for commercial evaluation with the GEMS2-Amethyst mission to enable a broader range of use cases to be explored.” So if you’ve ever wanted to know the atmospheric temperature profile while deciding whether to buy umbrella stocks, now’s your chance.
The GEMS2-Amethyst carries a dual-band passive microwave radiometer integrated in a GomSpace bus, measuring temperature and humidity across a nearly 2,000-kilometer swath and providing global coverage approximately every 12 hours. It orbits at 600 kilometers in a sun-synchronous orbit and has an expected operational lifetime of five years. That’s five years of peering through clouds, which infrared sensors can’t do because they’re basically just fancy sunglasses.
In 2019, Weather Stream launched the first commercial microwave radiometer in a cubesat. That first GEMS satellite, a three-unit cubesat, gathered temperature data for about 19 months before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. GEMS2-Amethyst, a six-unit cubesat, also observes humidity and precipitation. “While the original GEMS1 mission was intended as a pathfinder and technology demonstration, we were able to generate meaningful revenues from the satellite during its operational life,” Hurowitz said. Because even pathfinders need to pay the bills.
Weather Stream plans to establish a GEMS commercial weather data constellation with dozens of satellites, gathering data over any point on Earth as frequently as every 15 minutes. Also in development are GEMS3 and GEMS-Pearl microwave imager class sensors to improve observations in the planetary boundary layer and provide a low-cost platform for sea surface and tropical cyclone observations. Because if you’re going to name your satellites after gems, you might as well go all in.
A 2021 NOAA report confirmed that microwave sounders on polar-orbiting weather satellites have been the most impactful remote sensing observations in numerical weather prediction models for the past two decades. So basically, they’re the MVP of weather forecasting, and Weather Stream is trying to get in on the action.