The Harris team will design, develop, deploy, and operate the GOES-R ground segment, which will receive and process satellite data and generate and distribute weather data to thousands of users throughout the hemisphere. AER's focus will be implementing the software to produce over 68 environmental products, using the down-linked data from GOES-R's suite of remote sensing and in-situ sensors. AER will also provide support for systems engineering, architecture design, modeling and simulation, and, operations and maintenance. The first launch of the GOES-R series of satellites is scheduled for 2015.
Advanced instruments on the next-generation GOES-R are a significant improvement over the current operational GOES instruments. A key GOES-R instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager, will produce multi-spectral, time-lapsed imagery of weather systems every 5 min., during normal operations, and every 30 s, during severe weather, which will assist in improving the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper will provide continuous monitoring of lightning hemisphere-wide and provide a new way to assess the intensity of rapidly evolving thunderstorms. GOES-R will also host a suite of solar-monitoring and space-weather instruments, an area of increasing importance to diverse industries, such as satellite navigation, power distribution, and communication.
"We are proud and excited to participate in such an important national program," said Cecilia Sze, AER President. "AER will bring its in-depth background in remote sensing, space weather, and software engineering to provide more accurate and timely environmental products to GOES users. We look forward to a long-term partnership with Harris and NOAA to fulfill the important public safety and economic missions of GOES."
Other members of the Harris team are Boeing Mission Operations, Carr Astronautics, Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc., Wyle Information Systems LLC, and Applied Research and Engineering Sciences.
About AER
Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., established in 1977 and headquartered in Lexington, MA, is a wholly owned subsidiary of ISO Inc. of Jersey City, NJ. AER is an award-winning environmental research and consulting company, with demonstrated expertise in remote sensing, radiative transfer modeling, climate modeling, ensemble weather prediction, oceanography, space weather, atmospheric modeling, and planetary sciences, and it's a provider of medium- and long-range forecasts for the energy and financial markets.