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Weather data company MyRadar recently announced a launch agreement with Exolaunch to deploy weather satellites. The pathfinder satellites, called “HORIS-1” and “HORIS-2,” will be launching as part of two upcoming SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions.
Germany’s Exolaunch is a CubeSat deployment company that has become a fixture in rideshare missions, especially on SpaceX’s Transporter missions. Their ”EXOpod” CubeSat deployer has been used to launch over 240 CubeSats. In addition to the MyRadar agreement, the company also recently made a launch agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs to provide launch opportunities to space, free of charge, under the Access to Space for All initiative.
MyRadar, along with parent company ACME AtronOMatic, is principally known for the MyRadar weather radar/weather prediction mobile app. The app includes high definition radar, weather alerts, forecasts, and “a detailed hurricane tracker” according to MyRadar’s marketing materials. ACME AtronOMatic says on its own site that the app uses “50 Mb/s of densely compressed radar, temperature and wind data,” stitched together, to provide their predictions and radar maps.
NOAA SBIR Grant
This agreement is tied to MyRadar’s $650,000 Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The grant was given to MyRadar to launch and operate a pair of 1U CubeSats as a NOAA “Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) Ambassador,” part of the NOAA’s “Orbital Wildfire Resilience (OWR)” initiative.
The initiative is intended to use the CubeSats to “boost resilience against wildfires using MyRadar’s compact satellite technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its widespread information distribution platform with the popular MyRadar app.” MyRadar said in the 2023 announcement that the R&D in the OWR project “will bolster the availability of new hazard alert products for consumers, enterprise organizations and government institutions through the MyRadar app.”
This specific mission will use the HORIS satellites for “an orbital demonstration of multi-sensor data capture and downlink, AI-assisted alerting, and training dataset generation.”
In the 2023 grant announcement, MyRadar Chief Scientist & CTO, Dr. Sarvesh Garimella, said that the grant project “builds on the lab, field, and space testing the team has already completed, and the primary science mission will be to collect training data from low Earth orbit (LEO) for the larger constellation’s AI systems.”
Project HORIS
The name HORIS is an acronym for “Hyperspectral Orbital Remote Imaging Spectrometer.” According to SpaceNews coverage of the 2023 announcement, these hyperspectral CubeSats will “be equipped with high-resolution optical cameras, thermal infrared imagers and near infrared hyperspectral imagers that observes 16 bands between 600 and 900 nanometers.”
HORIS-1 will be deployed by Exolaunch into low Earth orbit (LEO) as a part of the SpaceX Transporter-12 mission, scheduled for October 2024. MyRadar’s recent announcement said that this CubeSat will be “pivotal in establishing the technological and operational groundwork for the subsequent HORIS constellation.” After that groundwork is established, HORIS-2 will then be deployed a few months later as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-13 mission, scheduled for February of 2025.
They are not MyRadar’s first satellites. ACME AtronOMatic launched three previous PocketQube picosatellites, called MyRadar-1, TRSI-2 and TRSI-3, which were prototypes for the current HORIS satellites. The satellites were launched in May 2022 with Alba Orbital as part of RocketLab’s “There and Back Again” mission. MyRadar shared imagery from the satellites on the then-Twitter (now X) social network.
These two upcoming satellites are intended to only be the start of HORIS for MyRadar. MyRadar is planning on a 150-satellite HORIS constellation, and the January 2024 announcement said this deployment only represents “the initial phase” of the rollout. Once the constellation is finished, they will become “integral to MyRadar’s strategy to enhance global weather forecasting and environmental monitoring and alerting capabilities.”
In the recent announcement, MyRadar CEO Andy Green said that the partnership with Exolaunch “represents our commitment to employing advanced space technologies for the modern era,” and that it is “a testament to our dedication to innovation in the field of weather and earth observation technology.”
This commitment to space appears to include a whole new website, myradar.space, which points to the HORIS constellation as giving users “an eye in the sky at the tap of a button or a swipe of the screen,” thanks to “its suite of orbital sensors and patent-pending onboard AI capabilities.”
In a statement to SpaceQ on the agreement, Garimella also said that “We are thrilled to embark on this journey with Exolaunch, marking a pivotal moment as we deploy our first full-system pathfinder. We couldn’t be more excited for this upcoming mission and the opportunities it creates for MyRadar. For us, HORIS-1 isn’t just about launching a satellite; it’s about propelling our vision for an orbital resilience platform into reality.”
