SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Oct. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company will
provide prime contractor TRW up to seven Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer
Suite (VIIRS) instruments for the National Polar-orbiting Operational
Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).
Under the contract, Raytheon will continue to design, develop, test and
deliver three VIIRS flight units. The contract includes options for four
additional units through 2014.
The first Raytheon VIIRS instrument is scheduled for launch in 2006 on the
NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft.
Current Raytheon VIIRS work is conducted under an engineering,
manufacturing, and development contract awarded in November 2000 by the NPOESS
Integrated Program Office.
Raytheon has successfully completed the VIIRS Critical Design Review
milestone and is well on the way to meeting the NPP launch schedule.
NPOESS is the low-Earth orbiting polar satellite system designed to meet
the nation's future civilian science and military needs for accurate weather
forecasting. NPOESS will replace the Department of Commerce's Polar-orbiting
Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) and the Department of Defense's
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites. It will satisfy
both civil and national security requirements for remotely sensed
meteorological, oceanographic, climatic and space environmental data.
VIIRS will provide the meteorological data required to produce
Environmental Data Records that includes imagery, sea surface temperature, low
light imaging and ocean color.
Santa Barbara Remote Sensing, a division of Raytheon Company's Space and
Airborne Systems business, has more than 35 years history developing
sophisticated multimission space sensors. Currently, Raytheon satellite
payloads have logged more than 450 on-orbit years. Most recently, Raytheon's
second Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) entered Earth's
orbit on May 4 onboard the Aqua spacecraft, the next satellite in NASA's Earth
Observing System (EOS).
With headquarters in Lexington, Mass., Raytheon Company is a global
technology leader in defense, government and commercial electronics, and
business and special mission aircraft.
Note to Editors: As part of the TRW NPOESS team, Raytheon will also
provide the entire ground system for NPOESS system, including the Command,
Control, Communications Segment (C3S) and the Interface Data Processing
Segment (IDPS). Raytheon's IDPS software architecture will deliver massive
amounts of data to produce weather analyses and information products in
support of forecasting, scientific research and tactical users. Raytheon's C3
Segment manages the overall mission, including active operation and accounting
of mission data, delivery of sensor data to the IDPS, and satellite command
and control.
For more information, go to the following websites: http://www.raytheon.com and
http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/viirs.html
Contact:
Pennington Way IV
310.647.9067 (Office)
310.200.3911 (Mobile)
pway@raytheon.com
SOURCE Raytheon Company
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Related links:
http://www.raytheon.com
CONTACT:
Pennington Way IV of Raytheon Company,
+1-310-647-9067, pway@raytheon.com
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