MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates has received a potential four-year contract to provide data from the company’s synthetic aperture radar satellite to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA will use data collected by the RADARSAT-2 satellite to aid snow and ice forecasting monitoring activities, MDA said Wednesday. RADARSAT-2 is built to gather all-weather imagery and surveillance information in near-real time for use in the agriculture, aviation, defense, […] More

Raytheon has updated the data transport and processing component of the Joint Polar Satellite System‘s common ground system. The company said Wednesday the update is intended to optimize data processing and dissemination as well as system availability and cybersecurity of CGS ahead of the upcoming JPSS-1 launch and future satellite missions. JPSS satellites work to provide weather and environmental data to […] More

Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson has said the company aims to reduce the price of the F-35A fighter jet to $85 million or lower per aircraft by 2019 as part of its goal to save over $5 billion on the F-35 program. Hewson said in a speech delivered Tuesday at Lockheed’s media day event in Arlington, Virginia, […] More

A Frost & Sullivan report predicts the Defense Department‘s foreign military sales program will experience a compound annual growth rate of 3.4 percent through 2021 as international government customers move to increase defense spending, update military equipment and respond to regional tensions. The research firm said Monday it found that ground-based air defense, fighter aircraft and tactical vehicle systems are the most requested and delivered […] More

PwC‘s strategy and consulting team has suggested various strategies the group believes can help defense companies win contracts in emerging countries such as Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea and Japan. PwC advisers Randy Starr and Anurag Garg wrote in a 2017 trend report they forecast that defense contractors will increasingly seek business with individual nations as military budgets in traditional defense […] More

Orbital ATK has concluded its sixth cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station which also marked the company’s return to flight operations at NASA‘s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The company said Monday the Cygnus spacecraft, nicknamed S.S. Alan Poindexter, has completed its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere as part of the OA-5 mission. Cygnus arrived at the space station in […] More

Research and Markets has released a new report that predicts the public safety and security market will reach $456.56 billion by 2021 from $247.53 billion in 2016, or a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent. The report cites the rise in criminal activities, natural disaster and cross border terrorism, public safety policies and regulations […] More

An Orbital ATK-built Cygnus spacecraft has departed from the International Space Station after a commercial resupply mission to start two secondary mission objectives. The S.S. Alan Poindexter spacecraft will launch the Spacecraft Fire Experiment-II to help study the behavior of fires in microgravity, then deploy CubeSats into orbit to support weather forecasting, Orbital ATK said Monday. The space vehicle […] More

The first of the four National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s geostationary weather satellites launched Saturday aboard a United Launch Alliance-built Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 6:42 p.m. Eastern time. NOAA said Saturday the Lockheed Martin-built Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R system will be called GOES-16 once it reaches the orbit within two weeks and will work to provide […] More

Davis Johnson, U.S. public sector vice president at Riverbed Technology, has said software-defined wide-area networking could support federal agencies’ digital transformation initiatives amid challenges posed by legacy information technology. Johnson wrote in a guest post published Thursday on GCN that SD-WAN works to provide agility, automation, visibility and flexibility to support the needs of key areas such as DevOps, customer experiences, […] More

An Orbital ATK-built spacecraft lifted off Monday onboard the company’s updated Antares 230 rocket to deliver more than 5,100 pounds of scientific instruments and crew supplies to the International Space Station. NASA said Monday the Cygnus spacecraft’s launch from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia marks Orbital ATK’s sixth cargo delivery mission to the ISS under the Commercial Resupply Services contract and […] More

NASA and Orbital ATK plan to launch a Cygnus spacecraft for its sixth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station between October 9 and October 13 as part of the company’s Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The space agency said Wednesday Cygnus will lift off aboard an Orbital ATK-built Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. Orbital […] More