Agreement Positions Tomorrow.io to Deliver Data to the Air Force, Other Government Organizations and Commercial Entities.
Boston, 2021 – Tomorrow.io, the world’s leading weather intelligence and climate security company, today announced that it was awarded a $19.3 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to support deployment of its proprietary radar-equipped weather satellites. The contract paves the way for a first-of-its-kind, commercially-owned constellation of approximately 32 small satellites to provide global coverage of 3-D precipitation and other critical weather and ocean observations, with much faster revisit times than currently available.
Tomorrow.io will offer data-as-a-service from its spaceborne radars to the U.S. Air Force and other governmental agencies worldwide, while the main use will be direct ingestion into its proprietary modeling suite, which includes numerical weather models, AI-enabled nowcasting and flood forecasting. These cutting-edge models power Tomorrow.io’s Weather Intelligence Platform™, used by hundreds of businesses and organizations to plan for and respond to increasingly extreme weather and climate conditions.
Radar offers capabilities that no other sensor can match. It provides vital observations of precipitation and storm dynamics, informing our understanding of the global water cycle that is critical for our survival. Yet more than 5 billion people worldwide live outside of consistent radar coverage. This limits the ability to generate reliable weather forecasts and provide critical information about hurricanes, typhoons, floods and other extreme weather events.
Tomorrow.io’s constellation will expand radar coverage worldwide to a scale never before imaginable—covering each point on the globe once every hour on average, compared to the 2- to 3-day revisit rate of existing spaceborne radar missions such as NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement mission. This will significantly improve real-time environmental situational awareness, operational weather forecasts of precipitation including flooding and hurricanes, and weather-related decision support in day-to-day mission planning and execution.
Building on the company’s proprietary technology development to date, Tomorrow.io will build and launch four satellites to demonstrate the technology and perform an extensive calibration and validation campaign, with the first two satellites scheduled to launch in late 2022.
The Air Force issued the award under its AFVentures Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) program, which is focused on large-scale, strategic capabilities in support of Department of Defense (DoD) missions. The constellation will enhance the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) mission to provide authoritative and accurate 24/7 global weather intelligence. Capabilities delivered under this contract are expected to strengthen execution of the National Defense Strategy and Defense Arctic Strategy, align with the goals and objectives of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) framework and Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept, and demonstrate rapid prototyping, development and deployment of advanced weather satellites.
“We’re extremely excited to deepen our relationship with the USAF and team up on this revolutionary mission,” said Rei Goffer, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Tomorrow.io. “The Air Force LCMC is the ideal partner for us, as a forward-looking organization that is at the global front of dealing with weather in complex settings.”
About AFLCMC:
AFLCMC provides holistic management of weapon systems across their life cycle and simplifies/consolidates staff functions and processes to curtail redundancy and enhance efficiency. AFLCMC’s operating structure provides an integrated framework for decision making and process optimization across the weapon system life cycle.
About Tomorrow.io:
Tomorrow.io is the world’s leading Weather Intelligence Platform™, helping countries, businesses and individuals manage their climate security challenges. Fully customizable to any industry impacted by the weather, customers around the world including Uber, Delta, Ford, National Grid and more use Tomorrow.io to dramatically improve operational efficiency. Tomorrow.io was built from the ground up to help teams predict the business impact of weather, streamline team communication and action plans, improve productivity, and optimize profit margins.
