One JPSS Contractor Ready To Shift Work Toward 2016 Gap-filler Satellite

摘要

If the U.S. government wants to add a small, polar-orbiting weather satellite to its launch manifest in 2016 - as an expert review team has recommended - at least one of the spacecraft's two instruments could be delivered in time, an executive with instrument-builder Exelis Geospatial Systems said. In a Nov. 8 report, a review panel led by former Martin Marietta Chief Executive A. Thomas Young advised the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to launch a "gap-filler" satellite as a hedge against the loss of either the current or next civilian polar-orbiting weather satellite - both of which are part of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) series of spacecraft NASA is procuring for NOAA.