TRW Inc. has been awarded a $77.8 million contract by the National Reconnaissance Office to design, build and operate the Geosynchronous Lightweight Technology Experiment (GeoLITE) satellite program.
GeoLITE is an advanced technology demonstration satellite with a
laser communications experiment and an operational UHF communications
mission. The GeoLITE program also employs streamlined acquisition and
design-to-cost methodologies to complete the satellite development,
integration and launch in early 2001.
TRW has total system integration responsibility for GeoLITE.
Teammates include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln
Laboratory and Hughes Space and Communications Co.
"This award recognizes TRW's strengths in building high
performance, high reliability civil, military and commercial satellite
communications systems," said Ed Nowacki, TRW Defense Systems Division
vice president and general manager. "It also draws on TRW's extensive
system integration capabilities."
The GeoLITE satellite will weigh approximately 4,000 pounds and
be launched on a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle. The satellite is
based on a modular bus design with multi-mission capabilities that has
produced programs such as the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth
Probe, the Earth Observing System Common Spacecraft, and the Republic
of China's ROCSAT-1 spacecraft.
GeoLITE extends TRW's ongoing efforts in satellite communications
systems. TRW is building six Low Data Rate payloads for the Department
of Defense's Milstar communications satellites and is developing a
prototype of the key digital processing system for the next generation
satellite communications system under the Advanced Extremely High
Frequency Engineering Model program.
TRW has built seven NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Systems (TDRSS) satellites, eight Navy UHF Fleet Satellite Communications satellites, 16 Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS II) satellites and eight INTELSAT III satellites.
TRW provides advanced technology products and services for the
automotive, space and defense, and information technology markets
worldwide. Its 1997 sales totaled nearly $12 billion (including the
recent BDM acquisition).
