Raytheon moves environmental satellite ground
sustainment team to Maryland in support of major upgrade
March 26, 2015
The team that sustains the National Aeronautic
and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System Common Ground
System (JPSS CGS) is now located much closer to key agency facilities –
in support of a major upgrade to the existing system and to provide
efficiencies to future missions – the company announced today.
Raytheon moved 70 positions from
Aurora, Colorado, to
Riverdale, Maryland. The 1,600 mile move concludes a
strategic milestone that brings the support team for the JPSS CGS
program in close proximity to NOAA's Satellite Operations Facility in
Suitland, Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in
Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Over the course of the year, we moved our
sustainment of the JPSS CGS across the country, without disrupting
program operations," said
Mark Sargent, the JPSS Common Ground
System program director. "The move ensures we are sustaining the program
in close proximity to our customer, and enables efficient extensibility
of the common ground system to new missions."
The move concludes a strategic milestone as
Raytheon prepares to deliver an upgraded JPSS ground system to NOAA and
NASA at the end of 2015. Its improvements include faster data retrieval
for improved forecasting; the ability to support multiple missions at a
better value; and an adjustable architecture to efficiently prioritize
the needs of the different missions that the system supports. The new
system, called JPSS CGS Block 2.0, will also improve perimeter security
and harden defensive features to ensure uninterrupted operations and
protection of equipment in an era of growing cyber threats. This move
does not impact the scheduled 2017 date for the JPSS-1 satellite launch.
The Raytheon Common Ground System was
developed under contract with NASA for NOAA. The system provides mission
planning, command, control and communications, data routing and data
processing for satellite programs. The system's data acquisition,
routing and processing supports multiple national and international
agencies partnered with NOAA including the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy,
National Science Foundation, European Organisation for the Exploitation
of Meteorological Satellites and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
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