PlanetiQ Awarded Two-Year NOAA Contract Valued up to $47.3 Million for GNSS Radio Occultation and Ionospheric Data

September 24, 2026

PlanetiQ has been awarded a two-year contract valued at up to $47,342,258 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide operational Global Navigation Satellite System radio occultation (GNSS-RO) data and Total Electron Content (TEC) data. The award was announced on September 21, 2026, by NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Commercial Data Program (CDP).

Under Task Order 1 (TO-1), PlanetiQ is set to deliver a minimum of 4,200 GNSS-RO profiles daily, including 700 profiles with enhanced temporal resolution and 500 low-latency TEC tracks. The base contract value is $28,413,038, with additional surge options potentially raising the total contract value to $47,342,258 over the two-year period.

The data provided will enhance the diversity and frequency of GNSS-RO observations across different times and geographic regions. This includes observations from sun-synchronous orbits outside the standard crossing times, which will improve the temporal sampling over the tropics and subtropics. These efforts align with NOAA's objective to enhance the temporal distribution of GNSS-RO observations.

This contract marks NOAA's first two-year data acquisition under the Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Program (ProTech) 2.0 Space-Based Environmental Monitoring (SBEM) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, which has a shared ceiling of $8 billion. The SBEM IDIQ contract allows NOAA to procure additional commercial environmental data as needed.

Delivery of the GNSS-RO and TEC data will occur over a 24-month period from December 1, 2026, to December 1, 2028. This contract follows PlanetiQ's current Radio Occultation Data Buy 2 Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Delivery Order 6, which also provides similar GNSS-RO and TEC profiles. The GNSS-RO observations are critical for improving numerical weather prediction models used by various government and international organizations, including NASA and the UK Met Office.

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