On September 18, 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) signed an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement with Raytheon for the Critical Design Review (CDR) study of a weather imagery prototype mission that will mature weather imagery capabilities under the Near Earth Orbit Network (NEON) Stratus project. The total agreement value of $5,950,982 funds Raytheon to conduct a mission design and feasibility study for Stratus, adapting a U.S. Space Force design to NOAA requirements that will culminate in a CDR. “I am excited for this new opportunity to use NOAA's Other Transaction Authority to advance weather imagery with our commercial partner, Raytheon,” said Irene Parker, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Deputy Assistant Administrator for Systems and Acting Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services. “The Stratus project will help modernize NOAA's observing systems by leveraging commercial best practices and cutting-edge technologies while allowing us to explore new acquisition strategies.”
The Stratus mission is for a single satellite, consisting of a spacecraft and a weather imager instrument, to collect and transmit data to the NESDIS Common Cloud Framework that generates, distributes, and archives environmental sensing data records for the weather and environmental data user community. Stratus will provide weather imagery, which is essential to monitoring clouds, fog, smoke, sea ice, and other phenomena that support weather forecasting, transportation, and commerce.
The Stratus Project has four primary objectives:
- Inform the formulation for NOAA’s next-generation weather imagery observations;
- Explore new acquisition strategies, including the use of NOAA’s Other Transaction Authority and bundling of mission components (e.g., spacecraft, launch services, and command control) which have traditionally been procured through separate contract actions;
- Demonstrate optical inter-satellite communication for data receipt prior to operational use in support of numerical weather prediction models; and
- Evaluate the benefits of faster data refresh rates for global weather imagery, especially over Arctic regions.
The Stratus Project will help inform NOAA’s next-generation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites through the NEON Program. Stratus will address procurement and management of all aspects of the NEON mission, to include the flight segment, spacecraft, instruments, launch segment, ground segment, and on-orbit operations. Stratus will provide first-hand experience in acquiring commercially available instruments, spacecraft, launch services, and ground services capable of meeting performance requirements.
NOAA has a history of successfully operating environmental satellites in low-Earth orbit for more than 50 years. Through NEON, NOAA is developing a new satellite architecture and buy-build-partner approach to launch small- to medium-sized satellites with Earth-observing instruments more frequently. A resilient constellation of LEO satellites, which can be deployed quickly, will enhance weather forecasting and disaster management. NEON will supplement and eventually replace NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), which will operate its series of polar orbiting satellites through the late 2030s. NEON will lay the groundwork for the next generation of LEO satellites long before the final JPSS launch takes place to continue, improve, and extend NOAA’s global observations for weather forecasting and disaster management.
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John Jones Bateman
nesdis.pa@noaa.gov
NOAA Public Affairs