Tomorrow.io has selected York Space Systems to build the initial phase of its next-generation DeepSky weather monitoring constellation under a $187 million contract announced Thursday.
For Tomorrow.io, DeepSky will serve as its second generation constellation with a host of new weather-monitoring instruments to increase its capabilities. The company currently operates a constellation of 13 satellites with a microwave sounder and active Ka-band radar.
DeepSky satellites will be equipped with second generation microwave sounders, GNSS radio occlusion, GNSS reflectometry, infrared and visible imaging, and precipitation radar. Some of the payloads will be built by Tomorrow.io, others supplied by industry partners, Chief Strategy Officer Rei Goffer, said during a media roundtable on Wednesday.
“These instruments essentially cover the entire electromagnetic spectrum, all the way from low frequencies … up to IR and visible. If you look at decadal surveys from NOAA, NASA, the DoW, and other weather agencies globally, these instruments close all the existing and up-and-coming gaps. In addition, they create capabilities that were never envisioned to be possible,” Goffer said.
DeepSky will enable better forecasting for hurricanes, wildfires, and floods to improve emergency alerts, CEO Shimon Elkabetz said.
“In the context of weather, the blocker for implementation of AI and the accuracy improvement is not necessarily the model; it’s the lack of data. DeepSky is going to become the infrastructure of data for everywhere in the world. It’s going to improve weather forecasting and AI models dramatically, because the problem today is that in most of the world, we don’t even know what’s happening in real time,” Elkabetz said.
The two companies did not specify how many satellites the deal involves, but York characterized the initial phase as “dozens” of satellites. The satellites will be built on York’s M-Class platform.
York previously disclosed a $187 million contract earlier this year, but did not name the customer. Tomorrow.io is the customer.
