After a period of relatively low daily profile count the COSMIC constellation is now recovering and presently reaching again ~1500 profiles per day. FM3 had shut down its GPS receiver for several weeks because of low power conditions. FM6 produced very few profiles because of severe attitude problems. The National Space Organization (NSPO) in Taiwan recently managed to overcome both of these problems. All six satellites are functioning again - but some problems remain: FM2 has only one working solar panel, FM3 has a stuck solar array drive - both of these conditions require to turn the payloads off at times, depending on the solar angle. One of the POD navigation antennas on FM5 still has low L2 SNR so that this satellite has to be operated with only a single POD antenna. One of the high-gain occultation antennas on FM6 recently began to display low L2 signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The cause for this new problem is still under investigation but presently it has the effect that we obtain only setting or only rising occultations from FM6.

New GPS receiver firmware has been delivered by JPL and was uploaded by NSPO to all satellites. The new firmware has modifications designed to increase the count of successfully scheduled and tracked occultations. With this new firmware it is now possible to obtain well over 400 good profiles per day per satellite provided that there are no other problems related to attitude, power, or low antenna SNR. The new firmware will also enable us track the stronger L2C signal transmitted by some of the newer GPS satellites but this has yet to be demonstrated.

The COSMIC program has received confirmation of funding for the next three years from its sponsoring US agencies, NSF, NOAA, NASA, and USAF. Taiwan is also planning on continued support for the Formosat3/COSMIC program. COSMIC is working on switching from the two commercially operated ground stations at Fairbanks, AK and Kiruna, Sweden to two NOAA-owned ground stations in Fairbanks, AK and Tromso, Norway. The new stations are presently undergoing extensive testing and the switch will take place in mid-April, 2008. After this we are planning to use the new stations for the next three years.

Real-time COSMIC products are now freely available via UNIDATA's LDM software. We hope that this new service will lead to new research and creative applications of the data to real-time applications.

March 17-18, 2008 the COSMIC program hosted an international workshop to discuss the use of radio occultation data for climate science. Presentations from this workshop can be found at the GPSRO Climate Applications Workshop Webpage

Posted by Chris Rocken, Bill Schreiner, and the CDAAC Team.

After a gap of 2 months (from day 252 - 317, 2007) FM6 started to provide data again on day 318 of 2007. The reasons for this long gap are still under investigation. Data from FM6 are looking good and are provided to users. Power issues with FM2 and FM3 remain unchanged and the amount of data obtained from these satellites depends on the solar angle.

We have discovered an anomaly in CDAAC data processing which has now been corrected. During periods when the LEO receiver time and GPS time differed significantly our profiles were affected by added noise. This was noticeable above 20-25 km altitude. These periods of added noise were sporadic and different for different FMs. Our real-time processing software has been fixed to account for these clock offset periods, is now undergoing testing, and is scheduled to run on our production machine starting Monday November 19, 10am Boulder time. We are also beginning to re-process all our post processed data. Re-processing should be completed in a few weeks. As part of this re-processing, COSMIC post processed data (mission 'cosmic') will be temporarily unavailable.

We have been working with JPL to find ways to increase the percentage of profiles that are inverted successfully. Sometimes as many as 50% of receiver-scheduled profiles fail in the CDAAC processing chain for a variety of reasons. Upgraded firmware, which will be uploaded to LEO receivers, with changes in the way reference satellites are scheduled, and in the way L2 is tracked for setting occultations, is expected to increase the percentage of profiles that pass successfully through all of our processing steps.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Bill Schreiner, and the CDAAC Team.

The daily occultation count has recently dropped to ~1200 due to several reasons. (a) We have lost contact with FM6. Efforts are underway to re-establish contact to this satellite. (b) The solar panels of FM3 are stuck resulting in non-optimal power and limited payload operation for this spacecraft. Efforts are underway to determine what happened and to try to move the solar array drive (SAD). (c) Orbit raising for FM3 has been halted and the satellite will remain at ~700 km altitude for now. (d) FM2 still is operating with only one solar panel and payloads are operated only part of the time. FM1 orbit raising has begun.

CDAAC plans to switch to processing with version 2.0 software during the week of Sept 17-21, 2007, which should result in a slightly improved success rate of profiles that pass our quality control. We anticipate an improvement of ~ 5%. New flight software which also should increase the number of occultations that we track is presently undergoing testing at JPL. Once these tests are completed we expect to upload this software in the next few weeks.

Meteo France has begun use of COSMIC data operationally - making it the 4th operational weather center to do so.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Bill Schreiner, and the CDAAC Team.

The satellite constellation is approaching final deployment with only one more spacecraft, FM1, remaining its initial 500-km orbit.

Presently the system is producing 1500-1700 good neutral atmospheric soundings per day with an average latency of about 2 hours. New firmware (FB 4.4) was provided by JPL and uploaded to satellites FM5 and FM6. This firmware enables operations if only the fore navigation antenna (POD) is working and was needed for FM5 and FM6 which experience intermittent problems with one of their two navigation GPS antennas. The firmware also improved L2 tracking and produced the first tracking data of the new L2C GPS signal. However it was decided to not upload FB 4.4 to all satellites until several firmware improvements and bug fixes can be applied. Power limitations on FM2, orbit raising of FM3, low SNRs on one of the navigation antennas of FM5, and recent attitude control problems on FM6 limit the number of daily profiles to the current level.

CDAAC software version 2.0 is nearing completion with several improvements including post processing capability, new data gap processing, and improved phase data filtering. CDAAC has begun re-processing of all COSMIC data. This analysis is in progress and it takes about 18 hours of CPU time on our new Linux cluster to process 1 month of COSMIC data.

Don't forget to register and submit an abstract for the Second Formosat-3 / COSMIC Workshop in Boulder October 22-24.

Posted by Chris Rocken and the CDAAC Team.

The number of daily soundings has temporarily dropped below 1000. This is caused by several issues. (a) We have uploaded new GPS receiver firmware version 4.4 to FM6. While we are testing/validating this new firmware this satellite has been taken off line. (b) FM3 is currently raised - this affects data from FM3 and also the number of data dumps from the other spacecraft. (c) FM2 is only operated during a small fraction of the day because of power limitations. (d) FM5 is producing only very few rising occultations because of continued low L2 SNRs on the fore POD antenna. We expect that most of these problems can be resolved soon and that we will be able to provide more daily soundings.

Posted by Chris Rocken and the CDAAC Team.

Count of daily occultations still ranges between 1400-1800 soundings per day. A GPS receiver firmware upgrade is undergoing testing at JPL. This upgrade is expected to further improve profile quantity and quality and it is designed to help with the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) drop anomalies mentioned below. All six satellites and payloads are functioning. Only FM1 and FM3 remain in the low orbits, all other satellites have been raised to about 800 km The final constellation shall be reached by the end of October 2007. FM2 appears to have lost one of its two solar panels and operation of its payloads had to be reduced. FM2 TIP and TBB have been turned off and GPS is operated, depending on solar angle between 10%-90% of the time. We are still experiencing periodic drops in SNR from some of the GPS antennas in the constellation which leads to periodic data loss. The reason for these events is under investigation.

The COSMIC team is working with NOAA and the UKMO to improve the latency of the BUFR profiles distributed over the GTS to operational centers. These BUFR files are frequently delayed many hours. This is expected to be fixed very soon. NOAA/NCEP went operational with COSMIC on May 1st 2007 along with the implementation in operations of the new NCEP's Global Data Assimilation System (GSI/GFS). The UKMO has begun operational assimilation of COSMIC profiles on May 15, 2007, joining the ECMWF and NOAA/NCEP.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Dave Ector and Lidia Cucurull.

We have had some satellite problems over the past couple of months with satellites FM1, FM2 and FM6. These problems have reduced the number of soundings from a peak of over 2400. We have recovered on FM1 and FM6 but due to remaining problems with FM2 and orbit raising maneuvers on FM4 we are presently generating ~1700 profiles / day. The cause of the anomalies with the GPS receivers on FM1 and FM6 has not yet been resolved. All three FM2 payloads are currently turned off while problems are being investigated. We are hoping for a resolution to these problems and remain committed to the goal of 2500 neutral atmospheric profiles per day. Satellites are still being raised with half of the satellites in their final orbits above 800Km. Both NOAA/NCEP and UKMO are planning to begin using COSMIC RO data operationally within a few months. NOAA / SEC has expressed interest to obtain COSMIC space weather data in real-time and the COSMIC team is working with them on this.

JCSDA: GSI/GFS with COSMIC data is running in real time in parallel to operations for implementation in operations as the new NCEP Global Data Assimilation System.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Dave Ector and Lidia Cucurull.

Satellites are are still being raised to move into final position. New version 4.3 firmware has now been loaded to all 6 satellite's RO receivers. Half of the satellites are now in their final orbits of above 800Km. Orbit raising is continuing on the other satellites, and will continue over the next 10 months - though we are now beginning to see fairly even daily global coverage with the COSMIC constellation. Numbers of payload data downloads have increased considerably to between 50-60 per day, reducing data latency and increasing numbers of soundings which can be used for realtime weather forecasting. We are presently experiencing an anomaly with one of the 2 POD antennas on FM6 - while investigating this, CDAAC has taken FM6 off-line. Prior to this we had reached over 2200 soundings per day. Assuming that all six satellites remain fully functional we expect that the mission requirement of 2500 atmospheric soundings per day should be reached, after the next firmware upgrade that we are discussing with JPL. TIP and TBB operations are ongoing successfully. Radio occultation profiles in WMO approved BUFR format are now distributed via NOAA/NESDIS through the GTS. CDAAC is pushing the profiles to NESDIS with about 90-min latency of on-orbit collection - clearly exceeding the mission goal of 180 minutes average latency.

JCSDA: Started a parallel run with the assimilation of COSMIC soundings with the final (and implementable) version of the GSI/GFS code. We selected refractivity as immediate use of COSMIC in operations.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Dave Ector and Lidia Cucurull.

All satellites are healthy and orbit raising is still continuing with 3 satellites near final orbit. All 6 are still being spread apart to maximize download capability. We are averaging around 1600 soundings per day. Days which have orbit raising activities (satellite burns) have reduced numbers of soundings -- GPS payload is turned off on the scheduled satellite. The constellation is in the process of receiving a new firmware upload for the GPS RO receivers which will add some capability including addition of capability for S4 index collection. TIP and TBB operations are ongoing successfully.
Another milestone development is that the ECMWF began using the COSMIC data operationally on Dec. 12, 2006.

JCSDA: Continuing to do parallel data assimilation runs with a new version of the GSI/GFS code. Validation against radiosondes shows a global reduction of the bias and RMS error when GPS RO observations are being assimilated into the system. Final tuning of the next generation NCEP global data assimilation system is underway prior to operational implementation.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Dave Ector and Lidia Cucurull.

All satellites are healthy and orbit raising is still continuing with 2 satellites near final orbit. All 6 are being spread apart to maximize download capability. Due to this, we expect to be able to increase our average number of payload dumps and soundings per day towards the end of the year. Currently, we are averaging around 1200-1600 soundings per day. Days which have orbit raising activities (satellite burns) have reduced numbers of soundings -- GPS payload is turned off on the scheduled satellite. TIP and TBB operations are ongoing successfully.
At 2006 Fall AGU in San Francisco there were several events related to COSMIC. There was a press conference, a neutral atmosphere session (and posters), a space weather session (and posters), and a mini-workshop discussion issues related to climate monitoring. The interest in COSMIC remains strong and feedback on data is positive. Another milestone development is that the ECMWF began using the COSMIC data operationally on Dec. 12, 2006.

JCSDA: Earlier parallel runs show a significant improvement on the stratospheric bias when observations of bending angle are assimilated into the model. A global improvement in skill is evident in the Southern Hemisphere. Results are very encouraging. At this moment, three cycling experiments are underway: (1) a control, with the assimilation of observations available in operations, (2) a run with observations of bending angle on top of the ones used in the control, and (3) a run with observations of refractivity on top of the ones used in the control. All the experiments are being cycled for a month. Based on the results, it will be decided which type of COSMIC GPS RO data type (bending angle or refractivity) will go into operations along with the implementation of the new Global Data Assimilation System at NOAA/NCEP.

Posted by Chris Rocken, Dave Ector and Lidia Cucurull.

COSMIC operations are going well with 1400-1800 soundings per day - several days had over 1800. The latest increase was achieved by opening the azimuth angles for occultation observations. The satellites went through a phase where they are exposed to sunlight almost permanently and this resulted in some loss of data. There has been a lot of focus by NSPO operations on orbit raising. FM 2 is now joining FM 5 at altitudes of close to 800 km. Satellites are being spread within the planes as well to prepare for more data dumps - less clustering. UCAR and JPL are working on the next load of firmware which will widen the occultation antenna angles, and allow for another increase in sounding numbers. This next load should be on board by mid December. A COSMIC / Formosat-3 press conference is planned for the Fall AGU on Monday Dec 11, 1400h (location TBD). The panel of Anthes, Cheng and Rocken will talk to the press. A special climate workshop is also planned for the AGU on Tuesday evening Dec. 12, 1930h - 2200h San Francisco Marriott (room Sierra H), J. Anderson, S. Leroy, T. Mannucci, and C. Rocken are co-conveners.

NCEP: The assimilation of COSMIC data into the GSI - next generation of NCEP's data assimilation system - is now being tested in the new computer (NCEP is in the middle of a computer upgrade, which includes the Primary and Backup operational systems as well as the development systems). We also continue parallel runs with COSMIC data to select the optimal Forward Operator (refractivity or bending angle) for operations.

Posted by Dave Ector, Chris Rocken and Lidia Cucurull.

COSMIC operations are going well with some days collecting around 1500 soundings in a day. We have had a few problems with our payload data connection from the Alaska ground station - 2 communications outages, server failures, etc, but those problems appear to be fixed. The satellites are healthy overall with a momentary pause in orbit raising. This is expected to restart early November. The first COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3 Data User's Workshop was held in Boulder, October 16-18th. We had nearly double the expected number of attendees, positive feedback about data quality and availability and interesting initial science results. Some of the highlights included initial positive impact of COSMIC data on the ECMWF model in the northern hemisphere, use of the COSMIC data to detect model errors over the Antarctic, and promising initial results for hurricane forecasts. In space weather we saw very encouraging results validating the COSMIC electron density profiles against incoherent scatter radars and significant progress towards assimilation of the data into ionospheric models.

Posted by Dave Ector and Chris Rocken.

COSMIC operations continue to improve with all satellites healthy, producing an average of between 1000 and 1200 RO soundings per day. We have managed to get as high as 1600 RO soundings in a day but are now back to focusing on orbit raising. NSPO has raised a 2nd satellite to 700+ km, and is now starting on the third. This is a slow process because be are depending on orbit precession to get all the satellites into their final locations. As satellites spread out, the numbers of data downloads and numbers of occulations will grow. CDAAC is steadily improving the processing of data, fixing and tuning the system in support of 24/7 operations.

Posted by Dave Ector and Chris Rocken.

All six s/c and all payloads are healthy. Numerical weather centers report that the data look "very good" and that the quality of rising and setting occultations are comparable. The Taiwan control team at NSPO restarted orbit maneuvers around the 4th of September with FM2 now moved from just over 500 km to just over 600 km altitude. We were expecting a sizable decrease in the numbers of soundings, but due to good resource management, NSPO has managed to keep the numbers of occultations around a thousand per day on average. Some days have more soundings than others due to burn activities and scheduling. Overall, the users have been reporting the quality of the occultations to be very high. TIP operations are improving due to correction of some timing issues, and TBB has completed an equatorial irregularities campaign at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

Number of registered users is up to 239 and data access to CDAAC is heavy - so heavy in fact that we had to throttle allowable download rates.

CDAAC requested and received approval from the GRACE to start processing GRACE radio occultation data. CDAAC was also informed about two upcoming launches of radio occultation instruments. (a) RoadRunner Launches on a Minotaur out of Wallops, Virginia scheduled for November 13th (2006); (b) TerraSAR-X launches on the Dnepr rocket in Russia, scheduled for October 31 (2006). While Formost-3/COSMIC clearly remains our first priority CDAAC will also attempt to process data from these additional missions.

Please note the September 17th deadline to sign up and register for a presentation at the Oct. 16-18 "First Formosat-3/COSMIC data users workshop".

Posted by Dave Ector and Chris Rocken.

On 28 August, COSMIC processed over 1300 good atmospheric soundings for a new record. The daily soundings number is still growing as adjustments are made to the receiver configurations, and the Taiwan control team steadily increases the number of downloads. Satellites remain healthy as the control team prepares to restart constellation orbit raising on 4 September. Over the past several weeks, the science community has been enjoying a steady growth of soundings numbers, partly due to the fact that orbit raising has been on hold. As we move back into a season of orbit adjust burns, occultation numbers may decrease again until the satellites are no longer clustered together. TIP operations are improving due to correction of some timing issues, and TBB is preparing for an equatorial irregularities campaign at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.

Some CDAAC statistics. Between August 1-12 106 separate users downloaded 519 Gb of data in 1.7 million files. COSMIC has 220 registered and approved users.

Posted by Dave Ector and Chris Rocken.

On 17 August, COSMIC had its first day of over 1000 good atmospheric soundings. This number is significant, because it represents close to the number of worldwide radiosondes launched per day. The percentage of successfully processed (passing all CDAAC quality checks) rising occultations is now very close to the success rate for setting occultations. This was achieved primarily by modifications in our processing algorithms, and to a lesser degree by reconfiguring the receiver firmware. All satellites appear to be healthy and the whole operation is running more smoothly than ever. UCAR and NSPO are learning more about the operation of the GPS RO receivers, and with JPL's help the numbers of good occultations keep rising. TBB testing is ongoing and TIP operations are steadily improving.

Posted by Dave Ector

Starting on 28 July, COSMIC data is now provided officially for public release. This comes after successfully loading all satellites with JPL's latest software for the Radio Occultation receiver. Currently, there are between 35 and 40 daily COSMIC downloads and we are producing over 700 good occultations per day (on good days). UCAR is still optimizing ground processing, and we expect this number to increase over the next several days. TIP is fully operational, and TBB will be doing special testing over Alaska during the next week.

Posted by Dave Ector

• (a) Some satellites are still clustered and we presently download data only every 8 hours
• (b) To avoid receiver memory overflow in these 8 hours we have to constrain the azimuth angle within which occultations are scheduled.
• (c) Most rising occultations still fail because of a receiver firmware problem.
• (d) Currently there are problems with FM2 which is not providing GPS data

COSMIC is steadily increasing the number of payload data dumps per day. Currently, our data downloads scheduled is up to 39, up from about 14 a few weeks ago. This increase will reduce data latency and is in preparation for public access to the data. We still are processing between 350 and 400 atmospheric occultations per day due to our narrow azimuth collections and some problems we have been having with #2 spacecraft. We are processing around 1500 ionospheric occultations per day. These numbers are expected to increase as the spacecraft move apart. Orbit raising is on hold for now to devote efforts to improving and increasing the amount of occultation data processed.

Posted by Dave Ector

The CDAAC is continuing to process all data that arrive from the COSMIC satellites.
At this point we have processed about 17,000 (15,000 good) atmospheric and 28,000 ionospheric profiles from COSMIC. The quality of the profiles is generally good but depends on firmware version and varies with satellite and payload operation modes. Presently we are generating 200 atmospheric and 800 ionospheric profiles per day. The number is still limited by several factors. Mainly we are still not able to offload all science data from orbit before memory overflow. This has prompted us to constrain the field of view for tracking neutral atmospheric occultations to 30 degrees azimuth of bore-sight. We are still only tracking few rising occultations in the neutral atmosphere. CDAAC has tested results from a new firmware upload on FM4 and the results are looking good. Some additional firmware improvements are still needed.
NSPO is now proceeding to upload this firmware to all FMs. After this is done NSPO plans to schedule more science data downloads. We expect to generate over 500 good neutral atmospheric profiles per day by mid-July. The plan is to open CDAAC and TACC data access when that number has been achieved and the new firmware has been uploaded to all satellites.

Posted by the CDAAC Team

COSMIC orbit raising is still making progress The cluster of 6 satellites is stretched along the same orbit with Satellites 3, 4, and 6 being the only satellites clustered together. Five of the satellites are at approximately 515 km altitude, while Satellite 5 has been moved to over 700 km altitude, on its way to 815 km. All GPS RO payloads are currently turned on most of the time, with the number of data downlinks steadily increasing. All TIPs are on and TBB is operating on 3 of the satellites.

Posted by Dave Ector

COSMIC orbit raising is proceeding. The cluster of 6 satellites are flying in a group that is approximately 5000 km in length. Five of the satellites are at approximately 515 km altitude, while Satellite 5 has been moved to 637 km, on its way to 800 km. Orbit raising is progressing slower than originally planned. All GPS RO payloads are currently turned on most of the time, but data downlinks are limited, which is limiting the number of occultations being processed. TIP and TBB are operating on 4 of the 6 satellites.

Posted by Dave Ector

COSMIC spacecraft are making good progress in deployment. Spacecraft 5 is now orbiting on its own at 600 km, away from the other 5 which are generally at an altitude of around 515 km as shown in the graphic on this web page. Orbit raising will start soon on Spacecraft 1 and 2. A new load of software for the GPS RO receivers is being prepared and should be loaded in the next few days.
CDAAC is behind schedule releasing data to the public. Our goal at this point is to open up the data from CDAAC and TACC after the new upload of firmware has been confirmed. We expect this upload to improve L2 phase data (which will mostly affect ionospheric and stratospheric observations) and provide some rising occultations. We do not yet expect that rising occultations will work flawlessly. At this point we are generating only very few profiles - but things should improve as soon as (a) more data can be dumped to ground stations and (b) more GPS receivers are operated a higher percentage of the time.

Posted by Dave Ector and Chris Rocken

Orbit raising is progressing with successful test burns. COSMIC satellites all received a new load of software for the GPS RO payload over the past couple of weeks which allows us to start open loop tracking. TIP payload is operating 24 hours a day. TBB has started testing on all frequencies over various earth receiver chains. All spacecraft appear to be healthy.

Posted by Dave Ector and the CDAAC Team

All 6 spacecraft are healthy and functioning normally. Spacecraft attitude has generally been good with spacecraft power margins better than expected. Payloads are being operated with the GPS payload on half time and TIP on full time. A new version of GPS payload software is in the process of being loaded to all 6 satellites. TBB is still going through its checkout process, operating occasionally. The constellation orbit maneuvering has been delayed due to a fairly long learning curve in calibrating burn profiles, but significant progress has been made over the past few days to prepare one of the satellites for its first maneuver.

CDDAC is running without any major issues and is sending data to NESDIS on a regular basis. Currently daily counts of processing are approximately 200 atmospheric occultations, 800 TEC arcs and 70 TEC occultations. The raw data conversion routines or FOX data have been upgraded to deal with buffer overrun issues, although since the GOX on times have been lowered from 24 hours, we have only seen occasional buffer overruns.

Posted by Dave Ector and the CDAAC Team

Read an interesting article about the "First look at the COSMIC data" in the President's Corner Spring 2006 issue: http://www.ucar.edu/communications/quarterly/spring06/president.jsp

Attitude continues to look good for all satellites. For most of the week the GOX was commanded to be on for 24 hours. This caused some data buffer overrun issues for the GOX data transmitted to the ground stations and most of the data was not translated due to parsing errors. To correct this problem the GOX will be commanded to be on for 6 hours and other methods of reducing the data volume are being investigated. The limitation in the amount of observation data is due to the tight spacing of the SC in the initial phase, once the SC are in an operation orbit they will download data on a more frequent schedule.

We have received good POD and OCC data with attitude stabilized, and we have been able to perform good orbit determination. We have been getting good profiles down to about 6 KM. The truncation of the profiles is due to known issues with the FM firmware for OL tracking. Version 4.2 should be delivered in the next few days. The newer GPS firmware will fix bugs related to OL mode and we anticipate getting good open loop data once this firmware has been uploaded to the spacecraft.

We have been using predicted orbits for ionospheric processing. Currently we are in the process of calibrating DCBs for the spacecraft receivers. It is anticipated that COSMIC data will be used in a space weather campaign coming up at the end of June.

We continue to look at TBB - GOX interference test data.

CDAAC Computer systems are performing well and there have been no hardware related failures. Processing loads are becoming high on some of the web service servers and we may add an additional server for handling data requests.

There was a hard drive failure in one of the BitGrabber systems in New Zeland and a replacement drive has been shipped.

Posted by the CDAAC Team

Attitude is now looking good for all s/c. This is expected to help POD. We are seeing reasonable SNRs on all antennas. FM4 started looking reasonable again on day 139.

FB 4.1 test upload was done to FM3. Once we confirm this worked we will give the green light for uploading FB 4.2.

JPL is working on FB 4.2 - several bugs that affect the OL model are fixed. There may be some more bugs. However we decided to upload FB 4.2 as soon as possible to start tracking near the surface while the satellites are still in low orbits.

The space weather community is already planning a COSMIC test period.

At this point we have processed over 1000 COSMIC occultations (to atmPhs level) and they are coming in faster and faster.

Posted by Chris Rocken

Posted by Doug Hunt

Posted by Dave Ector