the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (or COSMIC-2), the mission takes advantage of a weird property of GPS radio signals: They actually bend and slow down slightly as they travel through the atmosphere. This bending doesn’t affect the accuracy of navigation on the ground; it’s only visible from the side by something else in orbit. radio occultation, as it’s known, is akin to launching 5000 additional weather balloons every day—that’s how many more measurements the 6 COSMIC-2 satellites will be able to gather.

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