WeatherBill raises new round of funding

With the addition of $42 million in a Series B round, funding in this catastrophic insurance risk startup company now totals $60 million. The total is primarily due to today’s large infusion of cash from Google Ventures.

What is WeatherBill?

With statistical analysis and distributed computing for better weather forecasting, WeatherBill can offer farmers more competitive insurance rates, specifically, a personalized insurance policy. The company was founded four years ago by two former Google employees, one of whom was Chief Technology Officer at Google.

I hope WeatherBill is successful. This story is a welcome change from news about over valued social media companies, e.g. TechCrunch’s recent post about J.P. Morgan’s rumored investment of $450 million in Twitter. It is a welcome change when a major venture capital investment is made in a business targeting farmers!

Rainmakers For WeatherBill

WeatherBill Inc. is announcing $42 million in Series B funding from Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures and several previous investors… WeatherBill aggregates large amounts of weather data from the National Weather Service and other sources to run large-scale simulations that assess the probability of weather occurring several years in advance anywhere on the globe.

“Agriculture is an unusual area for venture capital, but we submit that agricultural technology has the same potential as biotechnology had in pharmaceuticals or chips had in telecommunications,” Khosla said.

—via blogs.wsj.com (28 February 2011)

Small Satellites Increase Access to Space

SRI International and NASA gave the final send-off to Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) and its bevy of diminutive CubeSat satellites on November 19, 2010 as part of a space, weather, and atmospheric research project. The launch was accomplished with the assistance of an elderly Minotaur IV rocket by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Space Test Program.

This is a CubeSat

The RAX mission goal is to improve understanding of intermittent and unpredictable distortion of earthly communications signals. Radio frequency and global positioning system (GPS) signals are adversely affected by upper atmosphere turbulence. This turbulence is like a whirlwind of ionizing activity, due to intense electrical currents that propagate from time-to-time through space. Solar wind storms, supposedly due to sunspot activity or coronal flares are ultimately responsible.

The fact that fluctuating levels of electrical activity in the upper atmosphere cause radio signal disruption is well-known. The disruption is intensely annoying for amateur radio operators such as myself, as I recall from my days as KA5JQF! It is annoying for GPS users, and can be a critical concern for navigation systems on Earth. With the data collection and experimental results from the RAX research, scientists will gain a better understanding of ionospheric turbulence. Near-space weather forecasting of sorts will finally become a reality.

Easier in near-space than at home

My analogy with terrestrial weather forecasting actually overstates the complexity! Predicting incidence and duration of radio signal disruptions, due to high solar activity and geomagnetic conditions, will probably be easier than meteorological forecasting of Earth’s very complicated weather systems.

Space weather prediction is challenging primarily because of the difficulty of collecting data, and corroborating cause and effect.

Ecumenical space missions

The RAX mission deserves special attention for another reason. It requires the collective participation of many astrophysicists, geophysicists, astronomers and graduate students from around the world. Radio telescopes and scientific radar installations in Alaska, Norway and Puerto Rico’s Arecibo are hubs for the research project team.

Minotaur rocket launching cube satellites into space – Image courtesy of NASA

I hope we’ll see a many more CubeSats in days to come, and for a variety of purposes. They were developed to increase both research and educational access to space. They are inexpensive, and lower the cost of space research. RAX is the first NSF satellite mission to be launched by the DOD .

Space missions using CubeSats don’t need vast infrastructure development and funding, unlike Apollo. Missions can be initiated by smaller, less wealthy countries and research institutions. CubeSat design timelines are very short, compared to traditional satellite technology. That’s why they’re particularly good for student involvement.