Lockheed Readies Solar Instrument for Space Weather Satellite; Mons Morrison Comments

Lockheed Martin has assessed an instrument the company built for a spacecraft that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration intends to use to measure solar activity.

The company sought to evaluate how the solar ultraviolet imager functions in different atmospheric conditions before its scheduled October installation on a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite in Denver, Lockheed said Monday.

SUVI is designed to collect data for the Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado to analyze and monitor space weather and effects on air- and land-based meteorological systems.

 Mons Morrison, a Lockheed SUVI program manager, said the company will continue to collaborate with NASA and NOAA to build the instrument and will work with the company’s civil space business that is making the GOES satellite.

The Lockheed team that tested the SUVI works with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the space agency manages the instrument.

NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service runs the GOES program, which has been operational since 1975.