Government/Military

[Satellite Today 07-01-09] The U.S. Air Force awarded a $30 million contract to Lockheed Martin to begin concept development for Space Fence, a system of land-based S-band radars supporting operations centers that detects and reports objects and debris orbiting the Earth, Lockheed Martin announced June 30.     Lockheed Martin’s team, which includes General Dynamics, AT&T...

[Satellite Today 07-01-09] The management of the development and validation phase of the Galileo satellite navigation program “was inadequate” and the proposal for a public-private partnership to oversee the venture “was unrealistic,” the European Court of Auditors said June 29.     The organization investigated the program’s development from September 2003 through December 2006, when the...

[Satellite Today 06-30-09] Boeing and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received the first on-orbit signals from the GOES-O satellite and reported that the Earth observation satellite is healthy and operating normally, Boeing announced June 29.     GOES-O, which will monitor weather developments over the Western Hemisphere, was launched June 28 by United...

[Satellite Today 06-30-09] DigitalGlobe signed a contract to extend its NextView world imagery service agreement with the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) for $12.5 million per month, DigitalGlobe announced June 29.     DigitalGlobe will provide NGA with continued access to the WorldView-1 satellite through March 31, 2010, for a total of $100 million during...

[Satellite Today 06-29-09] ITT Corp. named Edward Kelly as director of image information solutions for tactical development in the company’s space systems division, the company announced June 26.     Kelly will be responsible for assessing business trends and customer requirements along with identifying and helping capture new business for the image information solutions business unit....

[Satellite Today 06-29-09] Wavestream Corp. received orders totaling more than $50 million from General Dynamics for products from Wavestream’s family of Ka-band SSPAs  for the U.S. Army’s new satellite transportable terminals, Wavestream announced June 26.     The product being delivered to General Dynamics is a 50-Watt Ka-band SSPA with integrated BUC, which is part of...

[Satellite Today 06-29-09] MDA signed a $21.7 million contract with the Canadian government to provide the Canadian Department of National Defense with a maritime surveillance solution based on MDA’s Radarsat-2, MDA announced June 29.     The contract builds on a $2.4 million deal MDA won in June 2007 to conduct the definition phase for Polar...

[Satellite Today 06-29-09] U.K. government and space industry leaders launched the Innovation Growth Team (IGT), a review organization focusing on U.K. space and technology sectors, IGT announced June 25.     According to IGT, the organization will create a 20-year strategy for British leadership in space by seeking views from the space, entertainment, navigation and climate...

[Satellite Today 06-25-09] U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano terminated a program that would use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law enforcement using overhead and mapping imagery, the White House announced June 24.     Napolitano said the decision came to end the U.S. National Applications Office program, which was created by...

[Satellite Today 06-24-09] Raytheon received a $5 million contract from the Maryland Procurement Office to create a distributed services architecture cross-domain service to connect open service-oriented architectures and closed cross-domain guard solutions across the U.S. intelligence community, Raytheon announced June 23.     The architecture will be an enterprise-capable, SOA-compatible, cross-domain solution.     "We have provided...