The Lockheed Martin [LMT] team developing the next-generation Global Positioning System III satellites has completed a major integration and test event on the program’s satellite pathfinder, a company vice president said.
The satellite pathfinder, known as the GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed (GNST), was successfully powered with major elements of its navigation payload by team engineers and is a key indication the GPS III team is on track to deliver the first satellite for launch availability by May 2014, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for navigation systems, Keoki Jackson, told Defense Daily last week in a phone interview.
Jackson also said the company has begun integrating the first flight article.
“(We) just started mechanical integration on the first flight vehicle, Space Vehicle One, in the past couple of weeks, so we are officially off and running now on the integration for the first flight article,” Jackson said.
Elements of the navigation payload include advanced atomic clocks for improved GPS accuracy and the Mission Data Unit, the heart of the GPS III navigation payload, according to a statement. The test was completed in advance of integrating the full Navigational Payload Element, which is scheduled for delivery to Lockheed Martin’s GPS Processing Facility (GPF) this fall, according to a statement.
Jackson said one big improvement GPS III will bring is increased signal strength and accuracy. He said GPS, by design, is a spread spectrum signal, which is low power and easily jammed. GPS III will improve signal strength by “three to eight times” and will will increase signal accuracy by three or four times current capability, he said.
“That’s probably two of the biggest items from a military standpoint,” Jackson said.
The design lifetime of the new GPS III satellites will also be extended. Jackson said the new satellites have a design life of 15 years, better than the seven to 12 years expected lives for the current satellites in orbit. The new satellites will also sport a new civil signal designed to be interoperable with international global navigation satellite systems, the company said in a statement.
Lockheed Martin is currently under contract to build four GPS III satellites. The Air Force’s contract with Lockheed Martin contains options for total production of 12 GPS III satellites and Jackson says the company is working with the service to convert those remaining satellites to fixed-price contracts.
Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for GPS III with ITT Exelis [XLS], General Dynamics [GD], Infinity Systems Engineering, Honeywell [HON] and ATK [ATK] as subcontractors.