Summary

Commercial weather satellites refer to privately owned satellites that gather meteorological data and sell it for financial gain. Although the first weather satellite was launched in 1961, and more than 200 have orbited since then, private satellite operators emerged only in the 2010s. Indeed, for approximately the first 50 years, weather satellites were the exclusive purview of government organizations that would sometimes commercialize the data and other times would not.

The gradual process of commercialization weather satellites can be seen as reflecting a broader historical process of commercialization of space technology, meteorological science, and scientific data. Therefore, the history of commercial weather satellites gains a lot when situated at the crossroads of these three historiographical traditions. First, since the 2010s, history of space technology is incorporating constructivist, global, material, feminist, and environmental approaches, which contribute to shifting the focus from traditional narratives that portray the history of space technology exclusively as a heroic race for domination and control during the early Cold War, to one that is interweaved with social, environmental, and economic aspects of life. Within this frame, weather satellites (commercial or not) are a technology that shape, and are shaped by, the social, cultural, and political context. Second, commercial weather satellites also belong to the history of meteorological science. In particular, weather satellites can be seen as part of a longer history of data collection in meteorology, whether it is carried out with surface stations, aircrafts, balloons, buoys, smartphones, sounding-rockets, or other devices. The history of weather sensors; national, regional, and international institutions; networks; industry; trade; and funding, together with the power relations that go with them, help to illuminate how these elements permeate the history of commercial weather satellites too. Finally, the third important area to contextualize commercial weather satellites is the critical history of scientific data. This is important because commercial weather satellites, and the challenges and controversies surrounding them, cannot be fully understood without understanding the history of the data they generate. Considering that the production, dissemination, storage, and use of scientific data are historically situated helps to underline the epistemic, political, economic, mediatic, juridical, and diplomatic aspects involved in these processes when applied to satellite data.

Looking at the history of the commercialization of weather satellites as a juxtaposition of these three historiographical traditions (space technology, meteorology, and scientific data) helps to put forward compelling narratives to better understand how technologies, institutions, state and corporate patronage, trade, imaginaries, and scientific practices are intertwined with the governance of commercial weather satellite data.