Muon Space, a space technology company, has received additional funding from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLMC) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to collect ionospheric data on their MuSat-2 satellite mission. The contract, which extends through September 2024, is an expansion of the original contract awarded to Muon Space in September 2022.
The purpose of this contract is to develop a space-based prototype for global weather sensing. Muon Space will collect data on soil moisture, ocean winds, and total electron content, which will provide new insights for the Department of Defense (DoD) in weather and ionospheric modeling.
Muon Space CEO Jonny Dyer expressed gratitude for the Air Force, Space Force, and DIU’s confidence in their capabilities. He stated that they are excited to demonstrate the operational relevance of their commercial space dataset to the DoD.
The DoD will evaluate the commercial data collected by Muon Space’s MuSat-2 satellite for use in weather forecasting, ionospheric modeling, impact applications, and climate change assessments. The data will be made accessible for government-run Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) and to assess improvements to the USAF’s current and emerging numerical weather prediction and AI/ML modeling. The resulting data and interfaces will be compatible with the USAF’s Weather Virtual Private Cloud.
This funding and partnership with AFLMC and DIU will enable Muon Space to further advance their space weather data collection capabilities and contribute to the improvement of weather forecasting and modeling for the DoD.
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