Raytheon’s [RTN] Common Ground System (CGS) for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) achieved a major milestone with the successful download and delivery of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) data, according to a company statement.
Raytheon employees, as part of a team including Harris Corp. [HRS], the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Air Force successfully installed a Raytheon-developed JPSS antenna and Harris data recorders for connection to Raytheon’s JPSS McMurdo Multimission Communications System (MMCS) and JPSS Wide Area Network. Site Acceptance Testing of the capability was completed in January and the Air Force officially declared the capability as operational after operational assessments in February and March, according to a statement.
Previous phases of the MMCS project increased the NSF’s off-continent communication bandwidth, integrated an alternate communications downlink Earth station in Australia to provide higher operational availability and installed a new network infrastructure to provide data routing from McMurdo, located in Antarctica, to each of the NASA Near-Earth Network, and European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites MetOP satellite mission processing facilities, according to a company statement.
JPSS-1 is scheduled for launch in 2016, according to a Raytheon spokesman.
“With this achievement, we have proven Raytheon’s ability to successfully execute value-added satellite ground communications, data retrieval and routing solutions on time and under cost, supporting both military and civilian needs,” Bill Sullivan, JPSS CGS program director for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems business, said in a statement.