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Spire Global Awarded $4 Million NOAA Contract to Deliver Hyperspectral Microwave Sensing Payload

September 26, 2022

Spire Global, Inc. has been awarded a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) issued by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) of the National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) to leverage the technology of hyperspectral microwave sensing (HyMS). The two-year program, focused on enhancing the value and accuracy of NOAA's Numerical Weather Predictions (NWP), will fund Spire’s development of a HyMS in-orbit demonstration sensor on a 16U satellite.

The original objective of NOAA’s BAA was to develop a HyMS prototype in an airborne or balloon-based platform. Because of Spire’s ability to provide high-quality commercial data for NOAA’s weather forecast models and the company's existing work with RAL Space and the U.K. Government to develop Hyperspectral Microwave Sensors, NOAA will be able to harness Spire’s expertise and innovative solutions from the ultimate vantage point, space. The HyMS instrument is a new, advanced millimeter wave technology that delivers microwave sounding information to measure atmospheric moisture.

“In this era of extreme weather, the need to leverage data from space to deliver more accurate weather forecasts has never been more critical. NOAA’s continued priority to collaborate with earth observation companies allows us to better predict, adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change,” said Kamal Arafeh, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Spire. “We are thrilled to expand our work with NOAA to develop a payload that will collect additional near real-time weather observations and improve measurements within and beneath clouds.​​” 

Spire has been awarded a total of four NOAA contracts in FY22, valued at $23.6 Million. While previous NOAA contracts have focused on the purchase of radio occultation profiles, the HyMS contract is the first award to utilize Spire’s pioneering Space Services (S3) Model.

With a fully deployed constellation of more than 100 satellites, Spire is the largest producer of radio occultation data and offers a vast portfolio of current weather, historical weather data, and weather forecasts solutions.