[Satellite TODAY 01-07-12] Aerospace manufacturer ATK will conduct a study of network-centric small satellites as an element of the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) Defense Weather Systems Directorate under a new Department of Defense contract, the company announced Jan. 7.

   ATK’s study will aim to provide insight into the capabilities and characteristics of a new weather data service that can systematically augment the legacy Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). The study will focus on net-centric architectures and small, agile heritage spacecraft buses that can be used to support a variety of future weather payloads.

   The manufacturer will develop small and agile spacecraft concepts based on its heritage ATK A200 spacecraft bus to demonstrate its ability to host candidate Weather Satellite Follow-on (WSF) instruments. ATK Space Systems Vice President and General Manager Tom Wilson said the development project should provide a path to affordable and reliable spacecraft, following the company’s previous successes with NASA’s EO-1 and THEMIS programs and the U.S. military’s TacSat-3 and ORS-1 spacecraft.

   “ATK is delighted to have this opportunity to play a key role with Space and Missile Systems Center in an early exploration of disaggregated, affordable, resilient architectures,” Wilson said in a statement.

   The company added that net-centric architectures could enable an orderly transition from historically stove-piped systems to a 21st century system that provides for rapid processing and dissemination of key weather data directly to the warfighter. “Systems engineering trade studies will define a distributed ground system that utilizes commercial infrastructure to the greatest extent possible to enable cost-effective, robust, faster data distribution for weather and other missions,” the company said.