Jane Edwards
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded separate contracts to GeoOptics, Spire Global and PlanetIQ to support the second round of NOAA’s Commercial Weather Data Pilot program.
The three satellite firms will supply space-based radio occultation information through July 31, 2019 to help NOAA assess the data’s potential value to its models used in weather predictions, the agency said in a Sept. 17 news release.
The agency’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service will evaluate the data through the start of fiscal 2020 and generate the final report by the middle of fiscal 2020.
A FedBizOpps notice posted Sept. 17 says GeoOptics and Spire received contracts worth $3.4M and $1.4M, respectively, while PlanetIQ secured a $3.5M contract.
“These contracts represent another step toward bringing commercial sector innovation to NOAA’s mission of delivering life-saving weather forecasts and warnings,†said Karen St. Germain, director of the office of systems architecture and advanced planning for NOAA’s satellite and information service.
NOAA said it will use the pilot’s round 2 to build infrastructure to support future acquisition of radio occultation data from the commercial sector.
The announcement came two years after NOAA awarded data support contracts for CWDP’s initial round.
