New cloud-based system and business model will be used by NOAA to supply data from older satellites

There will be no effects on the health or safety of any of the satellites from the ongoing POES activities

Once at the forefront of NOAA's efforts to forecast weather and climate from space, three polar satellites are now managed under a new cloud-based commercial engineering services contract known as POES Extended Life. In order to maintain long-term operations for the older satellites that are a part of the legacy Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) fleet, NOAA chose to take an inventive approach utilizing a Ground System as a Service (GSaaS) facility. The results of a cooperative research and development agreement with Microsoft Azure Orbital in 2021, as well as further market research conducted over the previous few years, served as the foundation for this decision. Following a thorough examination, it was concluded that the GSaaS architecture approach might expand the POES purpose in a novel and economical way.

The data prompted NOAA to request bids, which resulted in Parsons Corporation being granted a contract in September 2022. In order to transfer operational management of the three satellites, Parsons then enlisted a group of additional private sector organizations. This was accomplished by developing a new commercial cloud-based ground system, which will be operational until September 2025. There will be no effects on the health or safety of any of the satellites from the ongoing POES activities. NOAA's next-generation cloud-based satellite ground system architecture will be developed and implemented using the knowledge gained from this GSaaS approach.