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.

An increasing number of data users are using 'internet download accelerator' programs to fetch data from the CDAAC web site.

Normal web clients (such as 'wget') fetch files one at a time. By contrast, these 'accelerator' programs launch dozens or hundreds of simultaneous requests for multiple files and multiple portions of a given file. This type of client can flood our server making access impossible for other users.

In order to be fair to the rest of our users, we are now suspending any user that we find using one of these programs. We will email you if this is the case and re-instate your access when you reply that you understand not to use these web clients.

We are also looking into ways of making our data available more quickly-- please be patient during this initial phase of our operations!

Posted by the CDAAC Team.

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

CDAAC is now generating around 370 occs/day, up from 200 or so last week.

The improvements are due to:
--More data downloads and fewer SSR/PC wrapping events.
--A fix to LEO orbit code which eliminates many failed orbit jobs.
--GOX firmware build 4.2.1 being uploaded to 5 of 6 satellites.

Improvements have been made in ionospheric processing as well:
--Fixes to ionospheric profile (ionPrf) generation allow us to produce
1200 - 1600 ionospheric profiles per day.
--TEC arc (podTec) computation enhancements give us 2000 - 2500 of
these arcs per day.

Posted by Doug Hunt

COSMIC took a break from orbit raising this week to focus on science downloads. Much progress was made with an increase in occultations to approximately 350 per day downloaded from the satellites. It is expected that we will reach an average of 500 occultations per day by 15 July with all satellites operating. TIP is operating on all satellites and TBB turned on for 3 of the 6 satellites.

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.

Posted by Dave Ector

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