Boston – September 10, 2026 -- Tomorrow.io has unveiled the full instrument architecture for DeepSky, a next-generation satellite constellation designed to close a global atmospheric data gap affecting more than 5 billion people who currently live without radar coverage.
Ocean coverage gap leaves 5 billion people without radar warning
Roughly 71 percent of Earth is covered by ocean with virtually no ground-based weather radar, according to the company. Storms frequently intensify over these unmonitored waters, giving coastal communities and global supply chains minimal notice before extreme weather strikes.
Five sensors fly on a single satellite bus to observe one atmospheric column
Each DeepSky spacecraft is substantially larger than current smallsat sounders, enabling all five instruments to operate simultaneously on one bus. The suite includes a precipitation radar delivering high-resolution 3D reflectivity profiles inside cloud systems; hyperspectral microwave sounders measuring vertical temperature and moisture through cloud cover day and night; infrared and visible imaging for cloud-top and wildfire detection; GNSS radio occultation for atomic-clock-timed vertical profiles unaffected by cloud cover; and GNSS reflectometry, which measures ocean surface wind speeds inside a storm's rain-wrapped core where scatterometers and optical imagers fail.
Instruments cross-verify data to train next-generation AI forecasting models
Tomorrow.io states the sensors compound: radio occultation anchors calibration against atomic time, radar resolves vertical rain structure, imagers capture surface thermal activity, and reflectometry reads ocean winds through heavy precipitation. The company says this continuous cross-verification supplies the foundational training data required for AI forecasting models.
"The people with the least warning are the people with the most to lose,