6U CubeSat EO/IR Solutions for Operational Weather Demo

GeoOptics operates the CICERO constellation of 6U cubesats for weather applications, delivering over 1,000 GNSS radio occultation (RO) profiles daily to customers. CICERO carries the advanced “Cion� GNSS-RO instrument, derived from TriG, developed by JPL for COSMIC-2. The Cion offers TriG performance in a cubesat package. Under this SBIR we will enhance the CICERO/Cion system to improve RO performance and add the ability to collect GNSS reflections (GNSS-R) from oceans, snow, ice and land. This will yield an extended “CICERO-X� addressing five of the eleven SBEM data gaps: Ionospheric density, equatorial ionospheric scintillation, tropical cyclone intensity, ocean surface vector winds, and soil moisture. We will study five specific CICERO upgrades that could be implemented in a protoflight CICERO-X spacecraft and be ready to launch within 15 months of study completion.