Weather data from the US military: radio amateurs want to enable further access
For alleged security reasons, US military no longer intends to share satellite weather data for research purposes. Amateur radio operators plan to fill the gap.
(Image: Elena11/Shutterstock.com)
A few weeks after the US government announced that decades-old satellite data for climate research and weather forecasting would no longer be made available, the amateur radio community wants to step in. This was reported by The Register, citing project leader Alan Antoine. He is working with others to provide alternative access to the data. After all, the satellites are still transmitting the data, but the US military has stopped processing and forwarding it. With the right hardware, however, the information can be received directly from the satellites in the USA, explains the expert. Only there would it be sent to earth unencrypted.
Usefulness still unclear
As the news site explains, those responsible for the SatDump software are behind the project. This can be used to process satellite data. Antoine has therefore started to write a decoder for the satellite data in question. The result can be obtained via GitHub, but the developers recommend contacting them before using it. Because the necessary reference material is missing, not all data can be accessed so far, explains Antoine, who had to proceed by reverse engineering: “It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing,” The Register quotes him as saying. So far, he does not know whether the tool is already being used. However, given the high value of the data, he assumes that the work will be appreciated.
Videos by heise
The data is from the so-called Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Satellites have been collecting information on various weather phenomena, including hurricanes, for more than 60 years. These are primarily intended for the US military, but for decades they have been processed by a special unit of the US Navy for civilian use and passed on to research institutions. At the end of June, the US government argued that this would pose a “significant cybersecurity risk to high-performance computing”. This practice would therefore be ended. The deadline was postponed once again to the end of July, but the planned discontinuation has not changed.
(mho)
