Harris Corp. announced that it has been awarded a six-month, $2.8 M program definition and risk reduction (PDRR) contract by the Boeing Co. for the ground processing segment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) geostationary operational environmental satellite – series R (GOES-R) program. When ready to launch in 2012, GOES-R will feature highly advanced sensor technology and will provide much higher resolution and data frequency than the current GOES spacecraft family. Value of the GOES-R PDRR work for Harris could reach $8 M by 2007 if NOAA exercises all its options for this phase of the contract. Under the GOES-R contract with Boeing, Harris is responsible for the design and development of the GOES-R ground segment. This includes developing a data processing and command-and-control ground prototype for the overall satellite system architecture. The PDRR phase will end with a “fly-off” competition in 2007, with NOAA selecting a single team for development and production of the end-to-end system. “We are extremely pleased to have this opportunity to work with Boeing to develop a processing system that will support the next generation of geostationary weather satellites for NOAA,” said Al Dukes, president of the Civil Programs business unit of Harris Corp.’s Government Communications Systems Division (GCSD). “GOES-R represents a quantum leap in the quantity, timeliness and accuracy of remotely sensed meteorological data. We look forward to fielding a winning prototype solution for the Boeing team.” GOES-R will carry several operational instruments, including the 16-channel Advanced Baseline Imager, which will provide visual and infrared imagery of the Western Hemisphere every five minutes; a Hyper-spectral Environmental Suite, which will provide full disk atmospheric soundings to assist in severe weather forecasting; an extended Solar X-Ray Imager; and a Space Environment Monitoring Suite, which will monitor the effects of solar activity on the Earth’s atmosphere. This suite of instruments will produce over 100 times the information provided by the current system and will offer a wide variety of unique observations of the environment, with particular emphasis on severe weather and hurricane activity in the Western Hemisphere. Harris ground data processing systems consist of complex suites of hardware and software that receive sensor data from satellites and process it into useable environmental parameters under stringent timelines, turning the data into useable information. The company’s command and control systems feature commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) design and high levels of flexibility. Designed for government and commercial applications, they support single-satellite missions as well as the largest and most complex satellite fleets deployed today.