University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a US nonprofit consortium of universities, established in 1959 by faculty from 14 institutions and incorporated in 1960, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. It now comprises more than 120 North American member universities plus dozens of international affiliates engaged in atmospheric and Earth-system science.

UCAR's founding purpose, and its principal ongoing role, is managing NSF NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research) on behalf of the US National Science Foundation, which remains its primary sponsor; UCAR also receives funding and contracts from NOAA, NASA, the Department of Defense/US Space Force, the FAA, DOE and EPA, with total fiscal-year expenditures of roughly $311 million in FY2024.

UCAR manages the COSMIC GNSS radio-occultation satellite program in partnership with Taiwan's space agency. The original six-satellite COSMIC-1 constellation (also called FORMOSAT-3), built with Taiwan's National Space Organization (NSPO), launched in April 2006 and operated until roughly 2020, demonstrating that GPS radio-occultation soundings measurably improved numerical weather forecasts.

Its successor, COSMIC-2 (FORMOSAT-7) — a six-satellite constellation again built with NSPO, which was reorganized and renamed the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) in 2023 — launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on 25 June 2019 and reached full operational capability in October 2021; as of early 2026 all six satellites remained operational, together producing several thousand atmospheric and ionospheric soundings daily. UCAR distributes this data worldwide, free of charge, through its COSMIC Data Analysis and Archive Center (CDAAC), and dozens of national weather services assimilate it operationally.

Beyond COSMIC, UCAR's space-related work traces back to the 1995 GPS/MET proof-of-concept mission and extends, through NCAR and UCAR's community programs, into satellite data assimilation, space-weather research, and Earth-observation instrument and mission support for NASA and NOAA. Antonio J. Busalacchi Jr. has served as UCAR's president since August 2016.