Government/Military

[Satellite Today – 4-29-08] Raytheon Co. won an $86.7 million contract to produce and install upgrade kits for the U.S. Army‘s Secure Mobile Anti-jam Reliable Tactical Terminal, or SMART-T, Raytheon announced April 28.        The upgrades will be installed on joint and international satellite terminals for the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps as...

[Satellite News – 4-29-08] The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is making all archived Landsat imagery available on the Internet for free, the agency announced April 28.     By February, users will be able to access any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes — the largest archive of civilian land cover...

[Satellite Today – 4-29-08] Qinetiq North America has been awarded a five-year, $150 million contract to provide NASA with environmental test and integration services, NASA announced April 28.     Qinetiq will provide facility services, cable fabrication, optical services and thermal blanket fabrication for a variety of projects that may involve the Hubble Space Telescope, the...

[Satellite Today – 4-29-08] Lockheed Martin has joined the Northrop Grumman team competing for the U.S. Air Force’s GPS Next Generation Control Segment (OCX) Phase B contract, Lockheed Martin announced April 28.     In November, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman received contracts to continue work on their proposed OCX systems, which include satellite command and control,...

[Satellite Today – 4-25-08] Northrop Grumman‘s aerospace division sales for the first quarter of 2008 increased 4 percent from 2007, the company announced April 25.     The division reported $2.1 billion in sales for the quarter ending March 31, compared to $2 billion in 2007. Space Technology sales increased 3 percent to $775 million, primarily...

[Satellite Today – 4-25-08] NASA’s Ames Research Center signed a cooperative research and development agreement with M2MI to develop nanosatellites for the commercialization of space, NASA announced April 24.     Under the contract, the two organizations intend to develop a constellation of nanosatellites, spacecraft weighing between 5 and 45 kilograms, that will be placed in...

[Satellite Today – 4-25-08] India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is set for an April 28 mission that will carry 10 satellites, including the Cartsat-2A spacecraft, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced April 24.     Cartosat-2A, India’s latest remote sensing satellite, carries a black-and-white camera capable of collecting images with a ground resolution of 1...

[Satellite Today – 4-24-08] Khrunichev Space Center and International Launch Services (ILS) are beginning a broad-based quality initiative for Khrunichev and its subcontractors, the two organizations announced April 24.     Key elements of the initiative include appointing a deputy director general responsible for quality control and management, incorporating new subsidiaries into a unified Khrunichev quality...

[Satellite Today – 4-24-08] Boeing Co. has installed the hardware for its Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) systems satellite operations center, the company announced April 24.     The center is the operational command and control system for the mission and will conduct mission planning, command satellites, manage satellite health and perform mission data processing.    ...

[Satellite Today – 4-23-08] The European Parliament has given its backing to Galileo’s deployment phase, which paves the way for the European satellite radio navigation system to be operational by 2013, Parliament announced April 23.     The deployment phase, in which all space and ground-based infrastructure is to be established, will run from 2008 to...