How Smallsats Could Make a Big Difference for NASA and NOAA

March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments

Information from space has historically been the province of the rich and powerful. Big Earth-observing satellites can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and launch, and the price of their data scales accordingly. Scrappy scientific upstarts have, for a while, been building smallsats to get orbital data on the cheap. And while a single smallsat won't give a small company or nation-state all-seeing powers, if you put a bunch of them together to form a constellation, you can get rapidly refreshed information on the planet.

Now, those commercial constellations are powerful and numerous enough that the feds are taking an interest, with both NASA and NOAA currently navigating pilot data-purchase programs. Neither organization is looking to outsource all its observations: Both agencies fly their own substantial satellites, and NASA sometimes makes its own little ones. But since capable constellations of smallsats are beaming down data about the planet—all of it for sale—why wouldn't federal science agencies take advantage of the abundance?

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has already seen the value in that, and signed data-subscription contracts with Earth-imaging startup Planet. And it has long bought high-resolution data from giants like DigitalGlobe, as has NASA. There's a reason, though, that science agencies haven't fully bought into the hype yet: Commercial smallsat companies can be capricious. They may come and go, or their data may change in quality or format, or not be up to snuff.

NOAA—responsible for things like daily weather forecasts, storm warnings, and long-term climate monitoring—operates its own fleet of 17 larger satellites, with some in the flagship GOES series valued around $500 million each. The agency isn't interested in replacing all its innate assets, or their data, with commercial smallsat stuff. But it is interested in augmentation. And so, as part of its Commercial Weather Data Pilot Program, the agency issued two contracts to smallsat companies Spire and GeoOptics in 2016. In exchange for just over $1 million, they were to provide NOAA with atmospheric data—not necessarily so NOAA could learn about the atmosphere, but so it could learn about the data's "potential value to NOAA’s weather forecasts and warnings."

The program kind of halfway worked. By the time the performance period concluded, in April 2017, only Spire had anything to show for itself. Its small satellites had spied on GPS signals, using a method called radio occultation to detect slight changes as the signals streamed through the atmosphere—revealing information about temperature or moisture in the area.

GeoOptics didn’t actually launch any satellites until July 2017. Which is several months after the April deadline.

NOAA had been planning to announce round two of the pilot program in 2017, but in September, the agency determined that that was “not in the best interests” of the government, or the program, and anticipated delaying till later in 2018.

NOAA officials aren't unconcerned with the risks commercial smallsat data poses, a position they expressed, as reported by SpaceNews, at the American Meteorological Society Meeting in January. Officials don't know, for instance, whether a given smallsat constellation will remain afloat, and whether its weather data will stay a similar price.

It makes sense that NOAA in particular—keeper of the National Weather Service—would be cautious about launching into private smallsats. “For the longest time [weather] has been completely handled by the government side of things,” says Dallas Kasaboski, an analyst at consulting firm Northern Sky Research. Meteorology needs data solid enough to pin predictions to, and sometimes it feels the only way to get a job done right is to do it yourself.

And the reason government agencies are interested in smallsats is also their cause for concern. There's money and innovation, and tons of data to be digested. But it also means companies are still newish; they're switching up hard- and software and merging and buying and being bought. All of that shifting makes it harder for agencies like NOAA to quality-assure data. “The Earth observation space is very competitive,” says Kasaboski. “It’s changing. Companies are changing hands or consolidating. There is often that kind of a threat.”

For instance: Google acquired an Earth-observation company called Skybox, which then became Terra Bella, which was then bought by unicorn Planet, which sells data back to Google, which also buys data from DigitalGlobe, which is, as of recently, owned by the same company that also owns SSL, which has built satellites for Planet in the model of Terra Bella.

Despite the downsides, other agencies can throw themselves into commerciality with more abandon, because their responsibilities aren’t the same. Take that space agency, for example, whose mission is more simply scientific.

In December 2017, NASA asked Earth-observation companies that are already flying smallsat constellations for their deets: Instead of dictating exactly what it wanted, NASA also asked them what they could give. “We are letting them kind of drive that show,” says Sandra Cauffman, deputy director of NASA’s earth science division. Later that month, the agency had gotten 11 responses (just a year and a half ago, in a similar call, they got only five).

Although NASA can’t say which companies threw their sats into the ring, Cauffman says the agency hopes to have contracts in place with some of them in March, for a one-year pilot project.

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There’s mostly only upside here: If that data is good enough, NASA can augment its homebuilt capabilities without having to construct, launch, and maintain its own constellations. There is a catch, though. “NASA has a free and open data policy,” says Cauffman. NOAA does too, which is why you can get any GOES images you want, any time you want (except when the government is shut down).

Companies, of course, may not be so happy about free access. After all, if NASA buys their proprietary data and then gives it away, no one else really needs to press purchase. “How much is it going to cost if we would like to distribute the data more broadly?” says Cauffman.

The other questions, of course, are about how good the data is, and how reliably it’s delivered—same as NOAA would like to know.

Both agencies are approaching the smallsat industry with varying degrees of question and caution. But this business direction—away from providing everything for themselves and toward paying for someone to provide for them—is the natural order of space things. The Obama administration made big strides toward outsourcing things like space launches, with the Trump administration following in step. And while the smallsat industry is less developed than the rocket industry, a little push, courtesy of Big Brother, could help the industry mature faster. Because the government is a big customer, but a tough one.