Oxfordshire, England, March 05, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Orbital Micro Systems (OMS), a leader in advanced instrumentation for small satellite missions and analytic-ready earth data intelligence platforms, announced that the first satellite in its Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) constellation has been delivered to NanoRacks for launch integration. Housed in an AAC Clyde Space bus, the satellite will be launched April 17, 2019 from Wallops Island, Virginia. It will be put into low earth orbit via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer (NRCSD) on the International Space Station – via NanoRacks’ Space Act Agreement with NASA’s US National Lab. The mission is part of the In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) Program, funded by Innovate UK and managed by the Satellite Applications Catapult.
In addition to this launch, OMS plans to place six to eight more weather observation satellites in orbit throughout 2019. With eight satellites, and OMS’ ICED platform direct-to-user data capabilities, observation revisit rates for any point on earth will approach two hours, compared to the three- to 72-hour data collection intervals available from existing government-operated satellites and data dissemination systems.
The full GEMS constellation is planned to consist of 48 CubeSats which will provide global weather observations at 15-minute intervals. Employing miniaturized passive microwave radiometers, the GEMS satellites will gather temperature, humidity and precipitation measurements, providing fundamental inputs for weather nowcasting and forecasting. Weather intelligence tools incorporating this analytics-ready data (ARD) will be leveraged through the ICED platform, by their customers in the aviation, shipping, insurance, and agriculture sectors.