Objectives of the Product

The primary market is a Commercial RO Service that provides RO data for Meteorology and NWP. This is the most mature RO market, which has recently reached the point where continuous financing can be foreseen to be available for procurement of commercial RO data products.

We base our mission on a trustable solution with strong heritage. Our heritage GRAS-2 instrument has been developed, within MetOp-SG, to meet EUMETSAT requirements for RO in the coming decades. The instrument flies on a satellite with proved reliability.

• A high-end space equipment to ensure high availability, dependability, and performance
• Long mission durations to maintain cost efficiency of data products

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Customers and their Needs

For European meteorology the accuracy increases by more occultations, the current need expressed by WMO is at least 20.000 occultations/day corresponding to 10 to 12 RO satellites with GRAS-2. ECMWF has demonstrated NWP improvements up to 100.000 occultations/day and EUMETSAT has expressed need for additional European commercial RO providers.

RO is extremely valuable for climate monitoring as it is a calibration free measurement without drifts. This means that RO observations also can be used to calibrate other data sources researched. RO observations for Meteorology can also serve climate.

RO for space weather, relate to monitoring and prediction of the ionosphere. In the long run we foresee that space weather will require more RO data than meteorology. The market is not mature yet but is under development.

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Target customers/users countries

The Commercial RO Service will be sold to the customer segments where we initially will focus on direct contract with EUMETSAT and NOAA for meteorological use as both EUMETSAT and NOAA currently have budget to procure commercial RO data.

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Product Description

The Commercial RO Service consists of a space segment and a ground segment. The main components of the Commercial RO Service are the GRAS-2 instrument hosted on a suitable satellite platform and the ground segment with processing and distribution of RO data products to paying customers.

The role of the Commercial RO Service in the context of the overall system/service of its target users is to provide access to global RO data of high quality with high availability and low latency. This RO data will improve the accuracy of numerical weather forecasts and will also contribute to improved climate monitoring, as well as space weather monitoring.

The external interfaces of the Commercial RO service are:

• The GRAS-2 instrument receives RF signals transmitted by GNSS satellites (Galileo, GPS, Beidou) on two frequency bands centred at 1575.42 MHz (L1) and 1176.45MHz (L5)

• The RO data user (customer) will receive Level 0 data through a User Interface Platform

• The RO data user (customer) will also receive data containing service quality indices through the User Interface Platform

Radio occultation conceptual geometry. The field-of-view of the different antennas are illustrated in green.

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Added Value

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Current Status

The work performed during the de-risking phase of the RoccS programme has led to a status where Beyond Gravity was ready to start building a first satellite. However, given the current priorities in the company, and the risk level of the programme, Beyond Gravity has decided that it was not possible to make the necessary investments to continue with the RoccS development phase at this time.

The following activities have been performed in the study:

Customer Anchoring

• EUMETSAT is defined as the anchor customer and Beyond Gravity believes that there is a high probability of selling data to EUMETSAT.

• EUMETSAT has also been involved in the requirement definition of the RO service and has confirmed competitiveness. Beyond Gravity believes they have come as far as they can without any commitments. It is not possible to get a commitment for data buying before data is available in orbit and validated.

Mission Partner Selection

• RFPs have been issued to several suppliers and also potential partners (both in Europe and US). After evaluations and co-engineering, further negotiations have been performed with Aerospacelab. They have a good and feasible technical solution, provided Beyond Gravity with the best Business Case, are a European company, and willing to participate in the InCubed project with the transparency needed.

Instrument Adaptions

• The instrument adaptations that are necessary have been investigated and future possible evolutions reported. Redesign of the Power Interface module has been identified and prototyped. Potential antenna accommodations and mechanical adaptations have also been investigated and reported.

Cloud Service Architecture

• Prototyping of a proposed Cloud Service has been done in the AWS cloud and we foresee a straight-forward system implementation.

Business Case

• The Business Case for the Commercial Radio Occultation Service looks very promising and provides a good Net Present Value.

Funding situation

• EUMETSAT expressed a clear interest in the radio occultation service we plan to initiate but it is not possible to get a commitment for data buying before data is available validated in orbit. Under these circumstances, Beyond Gravity has decided that it is not possible, under the current priorities in the company and risk level, to make the necessary investments to continue with the RoccS development phase.