Harris wins weather satellite ground system subcontract

The Boeing Co. has turned to Harris Corp. for a helping hand with the ground processing portion of its GOES-R Satellite Ground Segment contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Harris of Melbourne, Fla., has won a six-month, $2.8 million program definition and risk reduction contract from Chicago-based Boeing to design and develop the ground segment of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite?Series R program, known as GOES-R.

The work calls for developing a data processing and command and control ground prototype for the overall satellite system architecture. The program definition and risk reduction phase will end in a fly-off competition in 2007, with NOAA selecting a single team for development and production of the GOES-R end-to-end system.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. each won a six-month, $10 million contract from NOAA for the program definition and risk reduction phrase of the next-generation weather satellite system. The three companies and their respective teams will compare the performance and cost of alternative system architectures, determine system requirements and operations functions for GOES-R and produce system and segment designs to be developed in subsequent phases.

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 turning the data into useable information. They support single-satellite missions as well as the largest and most complex satellite fleets deployed today.

Harris has 12,600 employees and annual sales of more than $3 billion. The company ranks No. 23 on Washington Technology's 2005 Top 100 list, which measures federal contracting revenue.