Northrop Grumman Corp. has been awarded a 14-month, $8.4 million phase-two study contract by the U.S. Air Force for further work on the Enhanced Polar System (EPS) satellite communications program, the company announced. The study is designed to assist the Air Force in defining a payload for next-generation polar military satellite communications.

Under the $1.5 million first phase of the study, Northrop Grumman’s Space Technology sector proposed an architecture that leverages designs, flight hardware and software, procedures, testing, and documentation developed under the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (EHF) military satellite communications payload program.

The EPS will provide joint, interoperable and protected satellite communications in the northern polar region to user terminals compatible with the Advanced EHF satellite system. EPS would replace the current Interim Polar System, which is limited to Milstar-compatible low-data rate service.

The second phase of the study calls for Northrop Grumman to further reduce risk to the production schedule by defining interface-specific design details, planning the seamless flight production line transition from Advanced EHF to EPS and performing other selected tasks.