[10-09-07 – Satellite Today]  Northrop Grumman Corp. has successfully completed the System Acceptance Test of a Common Command and Telemetry System between the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), the company announced Oct. 8.

The test was completed using ground system teammate Raytheon‘s commercial off-the-shelf command and telemetry product, Eclipse, that was configured to support both satellite flight operations and text on the James Webb Space Telescope and NPOESS.

The test milestone represents the culmination of a four-year Raytheon development effort to bring Northrop Grumman its first true multi-mission command and telemetry system and proves the joint team’s ability to engineer a system while balancing combined NPOESS and JWST requirements and schedules.

The test verified ,1300 requirements through 26 “test-as-you-fly,” functional, performance and interface procedures and was the first SAT completed after program-specific requirements were merged into a baseline command and telemetry system. The SAT’s objective was to verify command rate and protocol, telemetry decomutation (the ability to transform raw data into engineering values), and to control and monitor the test hardware in an environment unique to Northrop Grumman, the company said in a press release.