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Care Weather

Y Combinator LogoW21
Active
hard-tech
space-exploration
satellites
weather
agriculture
 
https://www.careweather.com

The highest-accuracy global weather data from low-cost flat satellites

Care Weather collects the highest-accuracy global weather data to help governments and shipping companies adapt to extreme weather. The data is collected by Care Weather’s unique flat-panel radar satellite, which is 1000X more cost effective because it’s vertically integrated, gets more solar power, and sails on top of the atmosphere for a closer view of the surface. Our team includes CEO Patrick Walton (NASA Earth science fellow) and CTO Alex Laraway (mach 4 rockets). In the last 4 months, we built and launched the smallest radar satellite ever. We have $35M worth of LOIs, including one from the Air Force and others from cargo shippers. Care Weather is backed by Boost VC, Kickstart Seed Fund, Y Combinator, and more.
Care Weather
Founded:2019
Team Size:2
Status:
Active
Location:Orem, UT
Group Partner:Aaron Epstein
     
Active Founders

Patrick Walton, Founder

Co-founder, CEO, and project engineer at Care Weather. As project engineer, he funded, architected, licensed, and operates the company's three satellites on orbit. He has an M.S. and B.S in electrical and mechanical engineering from BYU. As an undergrad, he started BYU's nationally-recognized rocketry club and won $1M from NASA to lead a team of 20 in launching BYU’s first two satellites.
Patrick Walton
Patrick Walton
Care Weather
  

Alex Laraway, Founder

Alex is a full-stack aerospace engineer. He single-handedly designed and built multiple record-breaking satellites that are on orbit now. Alex got his B.S. in manufacturing from BYU. His space experience goes back to age 10 machining high-altitude rockets on a lathe in his garage and flying them at Mach 4 to the edge of space.
Alex Laraway
Alex Laraway
Care Weather
 
Company Launches
Care Weather 🌎 🛰️ Highest-accuracy global weather data from low-cost satellites
See original launch post ›

Hi everyone! We’re Alex and Patrick from Care Weather. We’re leveraging SpaceX rideshare and 5G electronics to make a swarm of low-cost satellites that get 17X more accurate global weather data.

(Left) Alex with with a flight-ready satellite. (Right) Patrick testing the latest satellite.

🌪️ Problem

Weather is quietly costing billions across the economy. For example:

  • ✈️ A recent supertyphoon damaged $200M of Air Force planes in Guam (JTWC).
  • 🚢 Ocean cargo ships reroute around so many unpredicted cyclones that they lose $60M of voyage time per ship per year.

It may seem like your weather app has tons of data to prevent this, but weather apps pretend predicted data is real. Those predictions are based on limited, inaccurate measurements from aging government satellites. Other solutions (weather stations, balloons, drones) aren’t scalable.

🌎 🛰️ Solution

After studying with a NASA expert, we invented a modernized radar satellite, called Veery. We can mass produce Veery at low cost and get orders of magnitude more truth data. Veery’s flat form factor gives it way more solar power and lets it sail on top of the atmosphere for a closer view of the surface. Veery will map ocean surface vector winds, soil moisture, and sea ice globally, every hour, with 100 m - 6 km resolution.

🚀 Traction

In the last four months, we built and launched the smallest radar satellite in history! And we did it with pre-seed funding and a team of two. In the same timeframe, we received $50M worth of LOIs from the Air Force, the National Weather Service, and several maritime companies.

Asks

Help us build a disaster-free future!