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Satnews Daily
February 3rd, 2010

Northrop Grumman — A Cooler Environment


Northrop Grumman — A Cooler Environment Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been selected by ITT Corporation (NYSE:ITT) to provide flight cryocoolers for the sensor payloads for two international weather satellites. The geostationary satellites will provide round-the-clock weather forecasts and severe weather alerts — cryocoolers are used to reduce thermal noise in space-based sensors.

The Northrop Grumman cooler design is based on the flight-proven High Efficiency Cryocooler (HEC) pulse tube cooler and will maintain the international satellites’ infrared detectors and optics at cryogenic temperatures for more than 8 years. The ITT sensor payloads will be based on the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) that ITT is currently building for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R-series, or GOES-R, for NOAA’s next-generation geostationary constellation. This improved imager has the capability to monitor three times the number of atmospheric events when compared to current generation payloads.