Northrop Grumman receives $222 million contract to update aging missile-warning satellites

Northrop Grumman receives $222 million contract to update aging missile-warning satellites


The contract would keep the Defense Support Program early-warning satellites in service until 2030.

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $222.5 million contract for technology upgrades to the Defense Support Program, a constellation of early warning satellites that has been in operation since the 1970s.

The contract announced on June 26 by the Space and Missile Systems Center would add another decade of service life to the DSP constellation. Northrop Grumman will provide technical and engineering support until 2030.

Northrop Grumman built both the DSP satellites and sensors that have been part of the U.S. military’s early-warning system since 1970. The satellites detect ballistic missile launches and nuclear detonations using infrared detectors that sense the heat from missile plumes against the earth background.

The final DSP was launched on a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 heavy rocket in 2007. Since then, the Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman multiple contracts to sustain and update the constellation. The latest $222.5 million contract follows a $132 million support contract awarded in 2015 that expired in June 2020.

The Air Force does not disclose how many DSP satellites are in orbit. The military’s missile-warning system has been updated with the Space Based Infrared System satellites made by Lockheed Martin. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are now under contract to develop new missile-warning satellites known as Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon

Image
You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth’s surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune,  The Anchorage Daily News  reported on Sunday. The balloon rides will be manned by a flight crew taking eight passengers in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football stadium. Each passenger could pay an estimated $125,000 for a six-hour journey. Mark Lester, CEO of Alaska Aerospace Corp., said the high-altitude rides will be available from Kodiak in a few years and will ...
Read more

Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies

Image
Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies WASHINGTON — The NASA Advisory Council has recommended that NASA review its existing planetary protection guidelines to balance the needs of science and exploration, an effort that could set the stage for a similar revision at the international level. The council, during a two-day meeting at NASA Headquarters Dec. 10–11, adopted a recommendation calling on NASA to establish an interdisciplinary committee of experts to review the agency’s current requirements for preventing contamination of other worlds by NASA spacecraft as well as any contamination of the Earth by materials brought back from those worlds. “NASA should establish a multidisciplinary task force of experts from industry, the scientific community, and relevant government agencies, to develop U.S. policies that properly balance the legitimate need to protect against the harmful contamination of the Earth or other celestial bodies with the scientific, social, and e...
Read more

Surprise! There's more water on Jupiter than anyone thought

Surprise! There's more water on Jupiter than anyone thought Jupiter  appears to have more water than anyone expected. Newly released data from  NASA's Juno probe shows that water may make up about 0.25% of the molecules in the atmosphere over Jupiter's equator. While that doesn't sound like much, the calculation is based on a prevalence of water's components, hydrogen and oxygen, three times more than at the sun. The new measurements Juno obtained are much higher than a previous mission suggested. The surprise result has scientists delving deep again into results from  NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter , which obtained drier results in 1995 when engineers deliberately threw the spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere. (Galileo was low on fuel and NASA didn't want to take the chance, even if it was a slight one, of the spacecraft accidentally crashing on a potentially habitable icy moon.) Reconciling the results from Galileo and Juno is key for sc...
Read more