From paper to production: Status update for the COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 program

CO SMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 is a satellite program designed to deliver next-generation global navigation satellite system (GNSS) radio occultation (RO) data to users around the world. This program is the follow-on to the COSMIC / FORMOSAT-3 mission, which was a joint US-Taiwan 6-satellite constellation demonstration mission launched in April 2006. The COSMIC mission was the world's first operational GPS radio occultation (GPS-RO) mission for global weather forecast; climate monitoring; atmospheric, ionospheric, and geodetic research. The GPS-RO data from COSMIC has been extremely valuable to the climate, meteorology, and space weather communities, including real-time forecasting users as well as U.S. and international research communities. FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC reached the end of its design life in 2009 but continues to provide useful data to users around the world, some 7 years later. Some of the satellites have exhibited unrecoverable anomalies and consequently the critical real-time satellite observing capability continues to degrade and will likely go offline completely in the next few years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Taiwan's National Space Organization (NSPO) recognize the potential GPS-RO data gap due to the degrading COSMIC/FO RMO SAT-3 constellation and agreed to implement the follow-on COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT mission in 2010. Despite both sides experiencing programmatic difficulties in the past several years throughout the course of implementing the COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Program, significant progress has occurred over the past year. The program successfully completed Critical Design Review (CDR) Part A (CDR-A) in March 2015 and the Ground and Data Processing Segments successfully completed their CDR in September. The COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Program continues to make progress towards its September 2016 launch date. This paper will provide a brief overview of the COSMIC-2 / FORMOSAT-7 Program including the Program objectives. It will also discuss the status of the various segments of the Program including the spacecraft design and payload technology, current status of satellite integration and test activities, existing and planned equatorial ground system architecture required to meet data latency requirements.