Spire, Muon Space, Weather Stream win NOAA microwave-sounder awards
Spire Global · Muon Space · Weather Stream
NOAA's TMATE program awarded Spire, Muon Space, and Weather Stream a combined $46.5 million to build new microwave sounding instruments.
what happened
NOAA awarded three companies contracts under its Temperature and Moisture Advanced Technology Evolution (TMATE) program, announced August 26: Spire Global Subsidiary $27,982,177, Muon Space $11,000,000, and Orbital Micro Systems (doing business as Weather Stream) $7,500,000, per NOAA's NESDIS release. Each company will develop, launch, and operate its own microwave sounding instrument over a 24-month period starting August 25, with the resulting atmospheric temperature and water-vapor data available for NOAA to purchase commercially.
why it matters
TMATE gives NOAA three independent commercial microwave-sounder data sources instead of one, and it is Spire's largest single NOAA sounder award to date, layering a build-and-fly instrument program on top of the smaller data-evaluation contracts Spire has run with NOAA through the year. For Muon Space and Weather Stream, it is a new government instrument-development line alongside their existing satellite businesses.
for who
NOAA data buyers, commercial weather-data resellers
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Spire Global, Muon Space, Weather Stream
- Category
- procurement
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 5 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-08-26
- Published
- 2026-08-26 21:23 UTC