ClimaCell, which provides weather data and forecasts, announced on February 24 that it plans to launch its own constellation with small meteorological satellites. ClimaCell says radar-equipped satellites will help it better understand the Earth’s weather and improve forecasts. The first launch is scheduled for the second half of 2022.
As ClimaCell CEO Shimon Elkabetz points out in a statement, ground radar provides information about rain and cloud structure, but the information is uneven and in the United States. Even in the case of, even basic weather forecasts have become difficult.
There are expensive radar satellites in space, but they are not very useful because they often visit the same area once every three days. So ClimaCell wants to reduce the constellation so that dedicated satellites can revisit the same area every hour.
“We use our unique sensor and modeling technologies to more accurately predict the weather at any point in the world, and our unique software platform that uses that data is suitable for any job or industry, depending on the configuration.”
“We can forecast, so we are going to evolve into a space-powered SaaS company. We will launch a satellite constellation to improve global weather forecasts worldwide. For the first time, we will surround the Earth with a always-on radar constellation and provide real-time weather forecast data for every point on the Earth,” said Elkabets.
Sure, that’s a big step for the company, but there will be more of these in the near future. Even in the near past, ten years ago, it was difficult for companies to get enough money to launch their own satellites. Now that has changed too.
Factors contributing to this change include easy access to launch services, the emergence of innovative technologies in the manufacture of radar satellites, and the availability of auxiliary services such as ground stations. Today, AWS and Microsoft offer similar services, with an ecosystem of vendors specializing in satellite manufacturing.
According to the ClimaCell team, the company is currently in talks with many vendors and wants to choose the best one.