Mary-Louise Hoffman
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have jointly tested the command and control features of the U.S. Air Force‘s GPS III satellite during a fourth launch readiness exercise.
The companies demonstrated automatic data transfer between the Lockheed-built satellite and a Raytheon-made operational control system, Raytheon said Wednesday.
The evaluation also sought to demonstrate the infrastructure’s maneuver planning, reconstruction and scheduling functions.
“Exercise 4 began the instantiation of vital OCX automation capabilities that give operators their time back in order to focus on mission critical activities, one of the important elements of a modernized GPS,” said Matthew Gilligan, a vice president and program manager at Raytheon.
“The findings the team made during this robust launch exercise will help mature the processes, procedures, and tools necessary to enter our rehearsal phase and ultimately the launch and checkout mission,” added Mark Stewart, vice president of Lockheed’s navigation systems mission area.
Raytheon and Lockheed used their launch checkout system software and satellite simulator in the test.
The first satellite for the Air Force’s GPS III constellation is scheduled to launch in late 2015.
