Brenda Marie Rivers
Lockheed Martin has delivered the U.S. Air Force’s second GPS III space vehicle from the company’s Colorado processing facility to Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida.
GPS III SV02 satellite, nicknamed "Magellan," travelled aboard a C-17 aircraft last week and is scheduled to launch in July, the company said Tuesday.
USAF awarded Lockheed a $7.2B follow-on contract in September to manufacture up to 22 more GPS IIIF satellites and another $1.36B contract to build the 11th and 12th space vehicles.
SV01 and SV02 GPS IIIÂ will join a constellation of 31 satellites designed to support positioning, navigation and timing operations for over 4B military, civil and commercial users.
Johnathon Caldwell, vice president for navigation systems at Lockheed, said that SV01 has already begun broadcasting signals as on-orbit testing continues.
Caldwell added the satellite is “operating completely healthy†and the naviagtion payload has so far exceeded expectations.
