Satellite data company PlanetiQ has opened a new science and engineering facility in Boulder, Colorado, to undertake work related to its commercial satellite constellation.

The laboratory clean room at the facility will be used for the development of 12 Pyxis-RO flight instruments to be installed in the constellation that focuses on weather.

The satellite-based Pyxis-RO will track Global Positioning System (GPS) signals travelling through the earth’s atmosphere and transform them into dense, precise measurements of global temperature, pressure and water vapour by employing radio occultation (RO).

"The highly sensitive Pyxis-RO can be used to routinely assess the planetary boundary layer and into the lowest 1,000m."

The weather sensor was successfully tested in June.

A relatively new technique for performing atmospheric measurements, GPS RO is used as a weather forecasting tool and for monitoring climate change.

The highly sensitive Pyxis-RO can be used to routinely assess the planetary boundary layer and into the lowest 1,000m.

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The technology is also capable of tracking signals from the four major satellite navigation systems, GPS, Galileo, Beidou and Glonass.

The new facility shares its space with Blue Canyon Technologies that is currently working on developing the initial set of 12 microsatellites slated to be launched in late 2016 and 2017.

The company claims that it will be able to provide ten-times the amount of data currently available from the existing RO sensors once all the 12 satellites are put in space, thereby improving the accuracy of weather forecasts, climate monitoring and space weather prediction.