COSMIC-2 / FORMOSAT-7: The enduring program

The COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Program has persevered through unusual budgetary ups and downs since the United States and Taiwan jointly agreed to pursue the mission in 2010. Despite these governmental challenges, the Program continues to make progress. COSMIC-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 FORMOSAT3/COSMIC mission, which was a joint US-Taiwan 6-satellite constellation demonstration mission launched in April 2006. COSMIC was the world´s first operational GPS Radio Occultation (GPS-RO) mission for global weather forecast; climate monitoring; and 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 2011. The satellites have exhibited some unrecoverable anomalies and consequently the critical real-time satellite observing capability is degrading and will go completely offline in the coming few years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Taiwan´s National Space Organization (NSPO) recognized the potential GPS-RO data gap due to the degrading COSMIC/FORMOSA T -3 constellation and agreed to implement the follow-on COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 mission in 2010. Despite both sides of the pond experiencing programmatic difficulties in the past several years throughout the course of implementing the COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Program, significant progress has occurred especially throughout 2012-2013. This paper provides a brief overview of the COSMIC-2 I FORMOSAT -7 Program including background information on the original COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Program, and the current COSMIC-2/FORMOSAT-7 Program goals and objectives. It discusses the current sate- lite and constellation configuration, activities to determine the optimal and minimal ground system architecture to meet data latency requirements, and other discussions on the payload technology that will be used to meet the program objectives. It also covers the current program status including some of the challenges the program has overcome and successes experienced in 2013.