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Director's NoteMark Mulligan |
Happy New Year!
I hope that everyone enjoyed their holidays and were able to relax and spend some time with family and friends.
As always, Hank gave another remarkable State of the Center talk prior to the Holiday Party. I am not sure how he is able to pull that together and so seamlessly present it. You probably concluded that the Center continues to do well with a diverse range of projects and enjoys a healthy financial state all due to the great staff here. I thought I would take this opportunity to provide a very brief status of a project you may have heard about, GeoMetWatch (GMW) STORM. Before I do that, I would like to extend a thank you to the organizers of the Holiday Party. They did a great job. My wife, who has previously worked on campus, commented on how impressed she was with it. It was unlike any she had attended before. I am told the choir did their usual outstanding job of entertaining. (I regret that I had to miss it due to a diaper emergency.) Thank you to both the party organizers and the choir for volunteering their time, creativity, and organizational skills.
The May From Orbit highlighted that SSEC has entered into a partnership with GMW on the STORM program (https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/fromorbit/may2013/page1.html). As that article details, GMW is a private commercial venture that obtained a licensing agreement with the Department of Commerce to fly six hyperspectral instruments into geostationary orbit around the globe. As stated in the From Orbit article, “the STORM system is based on the Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) that was developed from 1999 to 2006 under the NASA New Millennium Program administered by NASA with key technical leadership from Utah State University and UW-SSEC. Bill Smith and Allen Huang of UW-SSEC provided pioneering science and implementations techniques for GIFTS and will continue as key members of the STORM team.”
The STORM project has the potential to have a significant impact at the Center through the development of an operational data processing system and an instrument subsystem contract. The scope of work for the operational data processing system has not been fully agreed upon and will likely depend on the final source of funding. For each of the six potential instruments launched, it could include the reception, ingest, and archive of the instrument data into two data centers, located remote from one another to provide redundancy, and the processing of that data to create 10-15 Level 2 or 3 products.
Here at SSEC, Liam Gumley has been leading a team, with the support of John Cavin, working on the operational data processing system requirements and conceptual design. Initially, the team was tasked with developing a fundamental data system concept and an implementation plan. The team proved to themselves that the data processing could be done with off-the-shelf hardware while meeting a preliminary, self-defined set of requirements for the system. The implementation plan continues to be a work in process. The team is continuing to work on better defining the system requirements while responding to information, meeting and presentation requests from GMW.
The instrument subsystem would consist of a pair of blackbodies with the first spaceflight implementation of SSEC’s concept that uses miniature phase transition cells for blackbody temperature calibration. This subsystem also includes a new controller that provides precise blackbody temperature measurement and control. SSEC would be a subcontractor to Advanced Weather Systems (AWS) Foundation at Utah State. This is very similar to the arrangement SSEC had on the GIFTS project. A budget and scope of work have been agreed upon, but AWS must be funded before work can begin here. A small team of engineers is doing some preliminary groundwork on the new controller design in preparation for the project.
In short, the GMW STORM project continues to be a very exciting potential opportunity for the Center.
Stay warm. Enjoy the New Year.
