NOAA announced October 20 that it has signed a two-year research agreement with San Carlos, California-based Cowboy Space Corporation to test processing environmental satellite data in orbit. The objective is to examine whether useful information can reach Earth faster while reducing transmission requirements.

Cowboy Space will fund, build, launch and operate its Reason-2 satellite, currently scheduled for 2027. NOAA will provide an existing open-source model and historical raw observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite carried by Joint Polar Satellite System spacecraft.

The approach would process observations before sending selected results to the ground, rather than transmitting all raw measurements for Earth-based processing. Potential improvements in speed or resource use remain questions for the test; the agreement does not establish that those benefits have already been demonstrated.

The partners plan to evaluate the quality of the processed information and whether the approach could be suitable for future NOAA systems. NOAA explicitly says experimental data from this test will not be used in its weather-forecasting operations. The project is research into a possible future architecture, not a replacement for today’s operational forecasting service.