Photons to Decisions – Joint Polar Satellite System Common Ground System Value Chain

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are jointly acquiring the next-generation civilian weather and environmental satellite system: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The Joint Polar Satellite System will replace the afternoon orbit component and ground processing system of the current Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) managed by NOAA. The JPSS satellites will carry a suite of sensors designed to collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological and geophysical observations of the Earth.

The ground processing system for JPSS is known as the JPSS Common Ground System (JPSS CGS). Developed and maintained by Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS), the CGS is a multi-mission enterprise system serving NOAA, NASA and their national and international partners. The CGS provides a wide range of support to a number of missions: 1) Command and control and mission management for the Suomi National Polar Partnership (S-NPP) mission today, expanding this support to the JPSS-1 satellite and the Polar Free Flyer-1 mission in 2017 2) Data acquisition via a Polar Receptor Network (PRN) for S-NPP, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Global Change Observation Mission – Water (GCOM-W1), POES, and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and Coriolis/WindSat for the Department of Defense (DoD) 3) Data routing over a global fiber Wide Area Network (WAN) for S-NPP, JPSS-1, Polar Free Flyer-1, GCOM-W1, POES, DMSP, Coriolis/WindSat, the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN, which includes several Earth Observing System [EOS] missions), MetOp for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) 4) Environmental data processing and distribution for S-NPP, GCOM-W1 and JPSS-1

The CGS plays a key role in facilitating the movement and value-added enhancement of data all the way from satellite-based sensor data to delivery to the consumers who generate forecasts and produce watches and warnings. This presentation will discuss the direct contribution of sensors, data routing and processing, and product delivery to the benefit of society. This includes the value chain for sounding data to Global Forecast Models (GFS, NAVGEM, ECMWF) [NWS, DoD, International], Cloud Cover Analysis [USAF], Tropical Storm [NWS, USN, USCG], Soil Moisture [US Army, USDA], Ice Data [USCG, USN], and various unique missions, such as Forest Fire management and Post-Event Power Outage Assessments.