New Capabilities Being Considered in NOAA's New Space Architecture

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducted a study, titled the NOAA Satellite Observing System Architecture (NSOSA) study, to plan for the next generation of weather satellites. This study provided an opportunity to design a modern architecture with no pre-conceived notions regarding instruments, platforms, orbits, etc., but driven by user needs. The study formally concluded in the fall of 2017 and major results were presented at the AMS Annual Meeting in 2018. Additional work was conducted in 2018 and this paper will provide an outline of some of the new capabilities studied using previous and new constellation options.

As part of the NSOSA study, NOAA considered options for continuous high latitude coverage and evaluated their potential value. The study concluded that there was large value and that it could best be realized with combinations of the Tundra orbit, a 24-hour highly inclined orbit. The NSOSA study also looked at large constellations of small satellites, including cubesats, in the future weather mission. We show an integrated assessment of why such large constellations are unlikely to be competitively cost-effective unless NOAA follows a very different set of requirements.

Finally we will discuss other new potential capabilities for LEO, GEO, and Space Weather orbits. Major capabilities may include:

1. Doppler Wind Lidar measurements
2. Scatterometer measurements
3. Precipitation Radar measurements
4. Hyperspectral sounding from GEO
5. Imaging from LEO (visible, IR, and microwave)