Up to $736M for Harris to Run GOES-R’s Ground Segment for 10 Years
Jun 07, 2009 18:02 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
(click to view full)
Harris Corporation recently announced a 10-year contract to provide a complete, end-to-end solution for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – Series R Ground Segment (GOES-R GS) program. GOES satellites’ most important function involves tracking severe weather of all types. Their most familiar one provides many of the images and time-lapse sequences used in American television weather forecasts.
Both GOES-R and its accompanying ground systems represent significant advances over previous versions…
GOES-R is a 4 satellite collaborative development and acquisition between the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), its National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the US Department of Commerce. Program activities occur at the co-located Program and Project Offices at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
The first launch of a GOES-R series satellite is scheduled for 2015, and the 10-year ground systems contract could be worth up to $736 million if all options are exercised. GOES-R will improve image, and also increase the refresh rate from every 30 minutes to every 5 minutes in normal conditions, and every 30 seconds during periods of severe weather.
The GOES-R series includes a number of different environmental instrument suites, including the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI); Space Environmental In-Situ Suite (SEISS); Solar Ultra Violet Imager (SUVI); Extreme Ultra Violet / X-Ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS); Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) and Magnetometer (MAG). Instrument efforts began in 2001 with initial formulation contracts, and all instruments are now on contract.
The ground segment will receive and process the satellite data generated by these sensors, and generate and distribute weather data to more than 10,000 direct users. Harris will also provide the command and control of operational satellites, using an open-architecture I.T. infrastructure based on a “service-oriented architecture” that makes pieces of the program accessible for use by other software. The solution will have to accommodate an expected 40x increase in data to be ingested, processed and distributed. Components include:
Enterprise Management: The “glue” that links the other elements and provides for a degree of monitoring, assessment, and configuration control for the GOES-R ground segment.
Mission Management: Mission scheduling, satellite (including instrument) operations, satellite state-of-health trending, orbital analysis, and ground operations.
Product Generation: Algorithm support, processed raw data, processing to Level 1b (including calibration, navigation and registration), generation of the data for rebroadcast and for higher level data creation including operational derived products. The government provides the necessary science algorithms.
Product Distribution: of Level 1b, Level 2+, and derived products to user portals, including uplink to customers including Global Re-Broadcast (GRB), NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) for AWIPS, and a GOES-R User Access Point at NESDIS/OSDPD.
Harris is the prime contractor and systems integrator for the ground segment of the program. Members of the Harris GOES-R GS team include:
- Applied Research and Engineering Sciences
- Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc.
- Boeing Mission Operations
- Carr Astronautics
- Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc.
- Wyle Information Systems LLC
