Orion Space Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arcfield, announced that it has been awarded new work from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support its Advanced Access Methods for Earth Observations Digital Twin program (EO-DT). Work on the two-year program kicked off this month in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

NOAA's Advanced Access Methods for EO-DT program was created to improve the management and dissemination of critical data observed using digital twins of Earth by leveraging the principles of open science, FAIR data and interoperability to serve its diverse user base. Specifically, the Orion team will evaluate how NOAA can leverage natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLM) to streamline and accelerate access to the terabytes of data the agency collects from diverse satellite sources.

As one of the awardees of the NOAA EO-DT Joint Ventures Program Broad Agency Announcement, Orion used advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies to build a dynamic digital twin platform to process, analyze and visualize Earth observations. By running high-performance computing models in the cloud, the Orion platform connects space, atmosphere, land and sea observations into a single location, allowing the user to model and understand current, future and hypothetical scenarios.

"At Orion, we take pride in our ability to apply scientific rigor and innovation to uncover new capabilities in mission-critical areas for our customers," said Chad Fish, president and general manager of Orion. "We have already proven how AI can be leveraged for enhanced space domain awareness and Earth observation, and we are excited to extend that work to satellite mission planning."

Building on the success of the EO-DT program, Orion will utilize NLP and LLM for advanced data processing, focusing specifically on the intersections of satellite digital twins, space weather and space domain awareness. An emphasis will be placed on leveraging prior Orion research to maintain credibility and information integrity when using these tools.

"Data is only as valuable as the insights that are gleaned from it," said Kevin Kelly, chief executive officer at Arcfield. "We are thrilled to expand on our successes from the EO-DT program and to demonstrate how we can transform observations into actionable insight that can be applied to real-world problems."

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