[Satellite Today 12-08-08] Raytheon Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and the U.S. National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System’s (NPOESS) integrated program office completed another phase of compatibility testing for the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), the organizations announced Dec. 5.
    The compatibility testing exercise, led by NASA, was the first opportunity to exercise the two NPOESS-provided NPP ground segments with the NPP flight spacecraft. It included the processes of building, scheduling and up-linking instrument loads, managing the spacecraft in a fully automated mode, and verifying ground system and operational products.
    All commanding of the satellite was done by Northrop-Raytheon operations and support personnel, who will operate NPP on orbit. The NPP compatibility test used the NPP flight spacecraft, synthetically generated science data, spacecraft diagnostic and telemetry data collected from the spacecraft, and three of its key sensors: the flight Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, the Engineering Development Unit (EDU) Cross-track Infrared Sounder and the EDU Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite.
    The next scheduled command and telemetry testing will be in early 2009 following the integration of the next three flight instruments to the NPP spacecraft. A full ground compatibility test, planned for the summer, will consist of flowing pre-recorded satellite data through the ground station of the command, control and communications segment and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) long-term data archiving system.