JPSS CGS Block 3.0 Communications Strategies

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 Joint Polar Satellite System satellites will carry a suite of sensors designed to collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological, and solar-geophysical observations of the earth, atmosphere, and space.

The ground processing system for JPSS is known as the JPSS Common Ground System (JPSS CGS) and provides command, control, and communications (C3) and data processing and product delivery.  Developed and maintained by Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS), the CGS is a globally distributed, multi-mission system serving NOAA, NASA Department of Defense (DoD), and international missions, such as NASA’s Earth Observation System (EOS), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) polar-orbiting satellites (currently MetOp), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Global Change Observation Mission – Water (GCOM-W1), and DoD’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). The CGS has demonstrated its scalability and flexibility to incorporate multiple missions efficiently and with minimal cost, schedule and risk, while strengthening global partnerships in weather and environmental monitoring.

In a highly successful international partnership between NOAA and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the CGS currently provides data routing from McMurdo Station in Antarctica to the EUMETSAT processing center in Darmstadt, Germany. Continuing and building upon that partnership, NOAA and EUMETSAT are collaborating on the development of a new path forward for the 2020’s. The recent agreement between EUMETSAT and NOAA provides for each organization sharing satellite downlink resources with the other. This paper will describe that approach, as well as modeling results that validates its feasibility and expected performance.