An innovative hosted payload pairing of a hyperspectral meteorological instrument aboard a commercial telecommunications satellite appears on the verge of collapse because of a lack of financing, according to the two companies involved. While both GeoMetWatch of Las Vegas and AsiaSat of Hong Kong said they have not abandoned the idea, officials from both companies conceded that the deadline for determining whether GeoMetWatch's STORM instrument would be onboard the AsiaSat 9 satellite will pass without firm financing on the GeoMetWatch side. STORM is a 300-kilogram instrument whose precision is designed to be superior to similar sensors flown on U.S. government meteorological satellites. But these satellites' data are distributed free of charge, which has always been a challenge for the GeoMetWatch program.
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