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Harris Corporation Awarded $20 Million NOAA Contract to Deploy Ground Processing Products for the National Weather Service

Harris Corporation has been awarded a three-year, $20 million contract by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the Geostationary Weather Satellite Antenna System program. The contract was awarded in the first quarter of Harris fiscal year 2015.

Harris will provide its new WxConnect™ products that receive and process satellite weather observations from the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series Rebroadcast (GRB) and Japanese HimawariCast services. These products will be deployed at eight National Weather Service locations to support a broad range of mission critical forecasting operations.

The WxConnect–GRB product provides academic, commercial and government users a flexible, turn-key capability to receive real-time GOES-R rebroadcast satellite weather data, including imagery, lightning detection, space weather monitoring, and atmospheric measurements for the western hemisphere. It will be a primary tool for detecting and tracking severe weather when GOES-R is launched. WxConnect–HimawariCast receives and processes the re-transmission from the just launched Himawari 8 satellite.

Harris also is the systems integrator for the GOES-R Ground Segment, which brings new measurements and processes over 40 times more data than current systems, improving global weather forecasts and alerts.

"These Harris products allow forecasters to exploit new capabilities from the next generation satellites, providing a significant step towards NOAA’s vision of a weather-ready nation,” said Romy Olaisen, vice president, Global Weather Solutions, Harris Government Communications Systems