Spacehab, Incorporated, a leading provider of commercial space services, Tuesday announced that its Astrotech Space Operations subsidiary has been awarded a new contract by NASA/Kennedy Space Center to provide the payload processing facilities and support for the Calipso/CloudSat mission.
The Calipso and CloudSat satellites are scheduled for a January 2005 delivery to Astrotech's facility located at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California where the Company will begin providing its processing services.
The NASA contract, valued at approximately $1.3 million, provides for processing support from satellite arrival at VAFB through launch on a Delta II expendable launch vehicle (ELV) complex.
Scheduled for launch in April 2005, Calipso and CloudSat are part of the Earth Science Enterprise program whose mission is to study the planet's environment. These satellites will fly in close proximity, providing combined, detailed observations about the Earth's condition, assisting scientists with making predictions related to global climate change.
The Calipso and CloudSat spacecrafts, as part of a six satellite formation known as the A-Train, also provide students with a link to NASA research through the GLOBE Program, a hands-on, primary and secondary education science program.
Students from around the world take ground-based measurements of weather, clouds, and aerosols, collecting information that scientists can compare with related satellite data.
Astrotech is currently providing processing support for the NASA Aura spacecraft, scheduled for launch on July 10, 2004, another of the A-Train observation satellites. Processed at Astrotech's VAFB facility and secured onboard a Delta II ELV, Aura's mission is to study the dynamics of chemistry occurring in the atmosphere.
The spacecraft will provide data to help researchers better understand the Earth's ozone, air quality, and climate change.
