The six micro-satellite Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) was launched on April 14, 2006 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. All satellites and payloads are functioning well, and the program began distributing all data to all interested parties three months after launch in late July 2006. The program was executed within budget and schedule and the high-quality data are already starting to significantly affect atmospheric and ionospheric science and operational weather forecasting. Following several months of testing, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) commenced operational use of the COSMIC data on December 13, 2006. Several operational centers, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UK Met Office), Météo-France, and the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) plan to begin operational assimilation of COSMIC data in early 2007. As of January 2007, there were 400 registered users of the data, representing major U.S. and international universities, leading operational weather centers, research laboratories, and several private companies. The status of the spacecraft and data processing center can be found at the COSMIC web site: www.cosmic.ucar.edu/
The COSMIC satellites are designed to operate through 2011. NSF and other participating U.S. agencies are providing support that is critical to ensure continued delivery of the data and data products. The main tasks to be performed with US funding are: (i) operation of the COSMIC Data Analysis and Archival Center (CDAAC) for data processing, quality control, and dissemination, (ii) continued development and improvement of processing algorithms, (iii) assumption of 50% of the cost for the operation of the COSMIC remote tracking stations (RTS) for near-real time data collection, (iv) continued improvement and maintenance of Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) science payload firmware and software, and (v) operation of the COSMIC Project Office to support the national and international science community.
Intellectual Merit: This project has extremely high intellectual merit in that it will make use of innovative GPS RO techniques to provide global, continuous, and all-weather observations of the atmosphere for research and operations. COSMIC delivers two major advancements in GPS RO science: (i) the design and implementation of an advanced "open-loop" tracking technique for space-based sensing of the atmospheric boundary layer and (ii) the design and operation of first constellation that produces real-time RO soundings with uniform global coverage to support atmospheric research and operational numerical weather prediction (NWP), climate monitoring and research, and space-weather forecasting.
Broader Impacts: With the availability of ~2,500 soundings globally per day, COSMIC will have a broad and far-reaching impact for the operational and research atmospheric science communities. COSMIC will provide valuable data in traditional data sparse regions of the world, including polar and oceanic regions, for weather and climate studies. The fact that the COSMIC data are of high precision, high accuracy, and high vertical resolution, are not affected by clouds and precipitation, and require no inter-satellite cross-calibration, makes COSMIC ideally suited for climate research. COSMIC also provides much-needed ionospheric observations for analysis and forecasting of space weather, and other ionospheric research. The COSMIC data and the processing software will be made freely available to the broad university and user community. The project also has a significant educational component, as it will involve graduate and undergraduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows through collaboration with universities.
