Northrop Grumman’ Corporation’s Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector (ES3) has been awarded a $99 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile System Center to provide consolidated support and services for 13 mission sensors for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).
The DMSP monitors the meteorological, oceanographic and solar-geophysical environment of the earth for both military and civilian purposes. The contract began on May 1 and runs through November 2004.
ES3 will provide a wide range of hardware and software support and services for the program, including visible and infrared cloud imagers, a microwave imager, an ultraviolet imager and space environment monitors.
The principal tasks covered under the contract include maintenance of the sensors on the ground and in orbit; provision of the sensors to the spacecraft integrator; integration and test; launch and early orbit checkout support; enhancement and improvement studies; and support for improvement of ground- based sensor processing functions.
“This award significantly expands our role in the DMSP program beyond the Operational Linescan System (OLS) to include management of support and service for all the mission sensors,” said George Perkins, vice president-Space Systems.
“Northrop Grumman was selected to lead this effort because of our experience in integrating all of the scientific and weather payloads with our OLS, the primary sensor onboard the satellite,” added Perkins.
The Space Systems business unit has been under continuous contract with the Air Force for the DMSP since 1966, designing, building and delivering 21 Block V OLS systems.
Northrop Grumman Space Systems, a unit of Northrop Grumman ES3, has supplied the sensors for scores of space-based missions. Advanced space programs currently include the OrbView commercial remote sensing systems, the Warfighter-1 hyperspectral sensor, SBIRS-High camera system and the Discoverer II radar payload for future space missions.
