Jane Edwards
A Lockheed Martin-built weather satellite that launched in March is equipped with Northrop Grumman’s Scalable Space Inertial Reference Units that work to provide attitude control and sensor pointing capabilities for the spacecraft.
Dean Ebert, vice president of navigation and positioning systems at Northrop’s mission systems business, said in a statement published Monday the Scalable SIRU is designed to provide stabilization support for satellites needed to generate high-resolution images.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S, which now operates as GOES-17, took off aboard United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida to collect satellite imagery and provide weather predictions across the Western Hemisphere.
NOAA oversees GOES-17 as the second of four GOES-R Series satellites.
GOES-16 is the first of the GOES-R satellites that lifted off in November 2016 aboard the Lockheed-Boeing joint venture’s rocket.
Northrop said it intends to supply additional Scalable SIRU platforms for remaining GOES-R satellites.
