[SatNews] Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) has passed a critical pre-shipment review and initiated a phased delivery and installation of hardware and software that will form the network infrastructure for the ground segment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R Series (GOES-R) program.

Artistic rendition of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R).

Image courtesy of Lockheed Martin.

GOES-R will enable more accurate weather forecasts by supplying meteorological data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with much greater detail and significantly faster than the current GOES satellites. The GOES-R series will provide continuous imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s Western Hemisphere, as well as space weather monitoring, and will serve as a primary tool for the detection and tracking of hurricanes and severe weather. Launch of the first GOES-R satellite is scheduled for early 2016.

Harris will install 89 of the systems’ 155 total racks of equipment by mid-April 2014 at NOAA’s satellite operations facilities in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.
The Harris systems will form an enterprise-wide backbone that will enable 40 times greater volume of data to be ingested, processed and then distributed to NOAA’s National Weather Service and more than 10,000 other direct users. Harris is also providing satellite command and control software, which was delivered during the summer of 2013 and is currently being used by NOAA satellite operations teams.

Harris is providing incremental deliveries of the ground system to allow time for NOAA satellite operators and weather monitoring organizations to prepare for the new equipment, procedures and data associated with GOES-R.