GNSSRO at NSF: A personal view from the NSF Climate and Large-scale Dynamics program

Support for spaceborne RO is something of an anomaly at NSF, as the agency acronym is sometimes expanded as No Satellite Funding. NSF is also anomalous among operational agencies, which support GNSS development in order to advance a specific mission and satisfy requirements set at a high level within the agency. These anomalies beg the question: what is NSF's role in GNSSRO? More specifically, how and why did NSF take a lead role in developing RO technology, what did we out of it, and what are the challenges and opportunities for NSF moving forward? This talk presents a personal view (not endorsed by NSF) informed by my involvement with the COSMIC and COSMIC-2 missions and my interactions with Jay Fein, who brought GPSRO to NSF.