WASHINGTON (States News Service) - Ball Aerospace and Aerojet General Corporation are squaring off in a competition to build a long-term weather satellite that will award the winner tens of millions of dollars.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, agreed to pay the two companies $4 million each in November to come up with a design for a weather satellite instrument that will allow meteorologists to gather temperature, humidity and air pressure data in the severest of storms. The present satellite system has difficulty seeing through storms.
NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force plan in 2005 to launch the instrument, called an Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, along with two other devices on a proposed weather satellite.
Whichever company wins the design contest in July 2000 will negotiate the multi-million dollar contract with Goddard to build the instrument. NASA is not saying what the cost will be.
Representatives from Aerojet, based in Azusa, California, and Ball, in Boulder, Colorado, said they are looking forward to the challenge.
"Ball's a very fine company,'' said Terry O'Brien, Aerojet's lead engineer for the project. "I'm sure they will put out a great product. If we are going to win, we will have to put out an excellent product.''
The component will be part of an overhaul of the present weather satellite system -- Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite and Earth Observing System -- which at times has difficulty in seeing through dense cloud cover.
The instrument, which will become part of the new satellite, will gather information on solar radiation that is captured by Earth's atmosphere and later released into space. The instrument becomes useful when storm clouds prevent other instruments from gathering reliable information.
The instrument could restore up to 80 percent of the otherwise missing data.
Hopes are the data from the polar orbiting satellites will improve weather forecasting and "nowcasting" -- or real-time imaging -- of climatic conditions.
The challenge, representatives from Aerojet and Ball agree, will be in designing the new instrument to be one-third smaller than its predecessor and yet have the ability to receive up to a quarter more radiation frequencies.
"It's always a challenge. NASA wants to get a lot of capability with a relatively small volume. We will have to find the technology," O'Brien said.
Rick Higgins, O'Brien's competitor at Ball, said making the instrument small and radiation-sensitive, and yet hardy enough to survive liftoff, is the main challenge. It's also one he enjoys.
"I think it's like most jobs,'' Higgins said. "The most fun is the design and the least fun is the paperwork.''
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