Raytheon Company has achieved a significant program milestone by successfully capturing data from the WindSat Coriolis weather satellite, making the company’s Command,Control,and Communications Segment’s multi-mission network capability one of the first National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) segments to go operational.
The multi-mission capability incorporates a new fiber optic network from Svalbard to Tromso,on the mainland of Norway,to the continental United States.The network sends data to the Coriolis Data Distribution site, and the data are used to determine global sea surface wind speed and direction as well as to monitor solar mass ejections from the sun.The network provides the NPOESS program with high-speed data transfer, 155 Mbps connectivity, from the Svalbard, Norway, ground station previously available only through slower, more expensive satellite links, reducing costs for existing programs and providing additional capacity for future missions including the NPOESS Preparatory Project. The ground station is so far north that it can see polar-orbiting satellites on every orbit. This enables it to capture blind orbits not visible from the primary station at Fairbanks, Alaska.
