Government/Military

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract valued at about $50 million to execute a system design review for the next-generation GPS space segment, Lockheed Martin announced Dec. 21 . The company recently completed a GPS 3 system requirements review under a $10 million follow-on to a 2004 concept development contract. The...

Eumetsat, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, announced Dec. 19 that an agreement has been reached with Estonia to become the third Baltic State to join the group as a cooperating state. Estonia already uses some Eumetsat satellite data in its forecasts, and the cooperation agreement will allow the government full access...

The first satellite in Germany’s SAR-Lupe system was placed into orbit Dec. 19 by a Russian Cosmos 3M booster, satellite prime contractor OHB-System announced. The system of five identical satellites, which will be operated by the German armed forces, is designed to provide high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images to NATO military commanders in Europe...

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced plans Dec. 19 to locate a satellite receiving station in India for capturing data from the future National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the National Remote Sensing Agency will host the SafetyNet receiving station. Raytheon Co. will provide...

UGS Corp. will supply its NX digital product development software to Rocketplane Kistler Inc. (RPK) for the development of the K-1 launch vehicle, UGS announced. The K-1 is a fully reusable, two-stage launch vehicle that may one day deliver cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). RPK is developing the vehicle under a...

The newest modernized GPS Block 2R satellite has been declared fully operational by the U.S. Air Force, manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced Dec. 19. Launched in November, GPS 2R-16M joins two other modernized Block 2R-M spacecraft on orbit. Lockheed Martin is producing eight Block 2R-M satellites, and the fourth spacecraft in the series has been delivered...

Arrowhead Global Solutions Inc. received an order from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to provide the U.S. Marine Corps with expanded commercial satellite capabilities, the company reported Dec. 18. Arrowhead, in conjunction with SES, will provide bandwidth availability, portability and mobility to support missions in the United States, Europe, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia,...

NASA has signed an agreement to make its archive of images and other information available through Internet giant Google, NASA announced Dec. 18. Under a Space Act Agreement, NASA’s Ames Research Center and Google will make NASA’s information, including weather visualization and forecasting, 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, and tracking of the International...

Harris Corp. received a contract from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to develop an encryption device that could be used on satellite communication terminals, the company announced Dec. 14. The initial contract value is about $5 million and could be worth up to $12 million, Harris said.

Hughes Network Systems announced Dec. 13 that the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has approved the Internet Protocol over Satellite.v2 (IPoS.v2) air interface standard, which incorporates the DVB-S2 industry standard with adaptive coding and modulation. IPoS is the most widely deployed satellite broadband standard in the world, Hughes said. The first version of IPoS was...