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Millennium Space Systems announced that its Disaggregated Weather Satellite Pathfinder (DWSP) spacecraft, under design contract to the USAF Space & Missiles Center's Defense Weather Systems Directorate, has passed an important milestone design review. Performed under a fixed-price contract, the DWSP design directly supports the USAF Weather Satellite Follow-On Activities (WSFA) to assess more affordable and responsive solutions to replace the heritage DoD DMSP weather mission. As part of its fourteen-month contract, Millennium completed a thorough preliminary design for its proposed DWSP based on the Millennium AQUILA M2 platform. The Millennium team successfully designed accommodation on the platform for several key military weather payloads. The completion of the design positions Millennium to develop, manufacture and integrate DWSP within just 24 months of kicking off a flight contract, avoiding gaps in critical military weather satellite coverage and providing early an operational pathfinder for a disaggregated weather satellite architecture.

"Millennium has a proven track record of integrating complex payloads on very short timescales for very demanding customers," commented Millennium's DWSP Program Manager, Michael Mahoney. "Our work for the Air Force under this contract demonstrates our ability to accommodate several relevant payloads, such as JPL's Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR), and that we can do so rapidly, affordably and effectively. Declining space budgets continue to be the forcing function for new and innovative solutions, supported by smaller satellites, resilient & disaggregated architectures, more affordable & relevant payloads, and more flexible & dynamic ground system solutions. We're happy to have been part of the DWSP activity, and to have demonstrated yet again that Millennium offers unbeatable rapid delivery and affordability for DoD and National Security space missions."

"Our family of AQUILA and ALTAIR spacecraft bus platforms accommodates several different weather payloads in addition to COWVR, with ample volume, power, and data interface capability available for secondary payloads," added Millennium's DWSP Chief Engineer, Dr. Nirav Shah.