Muon Space (“Muon”) is continuing the progress of the successful NASA Cyclone GNSS (CYGNSS) small satellite constellation mission, as well as recent commercial satellite missions, that harness GNSS signals for Earth observation products, such as ocean surface wind speed, soil moisture, and atmospheric sounding. Founded in 2021, Muon set out to rapidly launch a GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) payload mission on one of its first satellites. In order to accomplish rapid payload and mission development, Muon leveraged existing antenna technology funded and developed by the University of Michigan and Ohio State University under the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program. Muon coupled these dual polarimetric antennas with its own state-of-the-art software-defined radio (SDR) technology to design a next generation GNSS-R payload that was launched in March 2024 on Muon’s second satellite MuSat2. In parallel to developing the Muon polarimetric GNSS-R payload, Muon was also awarded in 2022 a USAF Commercial Weather Data Pilot program contract to evaluate soil moisture, ocean surface wind speed, and ionospheric total electron content (TEC) products generated by MuSat2. Under this contract, Muon has developed a generalized machine learning retrieval framework to derive various products from GNSS-R observations, and prior to the launch of MuSat2, Muon developed these operational products using CYGNSS observations as a proxy. Since May 2024, MuSat2, which was launched into polar, Sun synchronous orbit for global coverage, has been producing soil moisture and ocean surface wind speed products, as well as novel right hand circularly polarized reflections from all surface types (i.e., land, ocean, sea ice). This talk will introduce the Muon commercial GNSS-R payload and MuSat2 mission, the current GNSS-R data products derived from both MuSat2 and CYGNSS, and the plans for future Muon GNSS-R satellites, including ongoing development of a high-gain, beamforming GNSS-R payload to be launched in 2025 to address improved retrieval of tropical cyclone winds and soil moisture in fire-prone areas.

About the Speaker

Dr. Dallas Masters has over 30 years of experience working in GNSS technology, remote sensing, and commercial small satellites. At Muon Space, he is the VP of the Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) Program, leading a team conceiving and developing Muon’s SoOp remote sensing payloads and products, including MuSat2, his fifth GNSS-R satellite mission. Previously, he led the Earth Observations Team at Spire Global in building the first commercial GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) CubeSats missions and established the first commercial purchases of GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO) and GNSS-R data products working with agencies such as by the USAF, NASA, NOAA, ESA, and EUMETSAT. Dallas also led Spire Global’s first efforts to use its constellation of CubeSats to monitor GNSS jamming and L-band radio-frequency interference (RFI). He originally pioneered using GNSS-R for remotely sensing soil moisture and has performed research in many areas of navigation systems, remote sensing, and Earth science, and he has been funded under a variety of NASA, NOAA, and ESA programs.