SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council Meteorological and Oceanographic Collection Requirements Report has documented twelve gaps in DoD Weather Operations, of which, Cloud Characterization (CC) and Theater Weather Imaging (TWI) are the two highest priority gaps specifically identified by the Air Force. These Space-Based Environment Monitoring (SBEM) requirements will partially be addressed by the ORS- 8 and Weather Satellite Follow-on EO/IR (WSF-E) programs; however, these will not be operational until 2022 or later. Even with these other LEO satellites operational, there will still be a data gap for observations at dawn/dusk terminator sun-sync orbit. Furthermore, space is increasingly contested by our adversaries and putting up large $100M-$1B weather satellites contributes to the fragility of our space capabilities. The AFRL WxSat project serves as a pathfinder for a constellation of affordable, rapidly deployed small weather satellites that can fill these mission gaps, provide faster revisits, and increase the resiliency of the SBEM capability. Innoflight proposes to develop the WxSat payload electronics, from cryo-coolers and read-out integrated circuits (ROICs) to spacecraft bus.
