Harris Corp. has opened a 24,400-square-foot facility in Greenbelt, Md., to support its 10-year, $736 million contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for work on a major weather satellite system.
Harris is the prime contractor and systems integrator for the project, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite—Series R Ground Segment (GOES-R GS).
The Greenbelt office will house about 100 employees of Harris and its GOES-R GS subcontractors, Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., and Carr Astronautics. In addition to a development lab, the facility will include a staging area for equipment that ultimately will be installed at government facilities.
Harris already employs more than 300 people in Maryland and about 1,500 rest of the Washington, D.C. area.
The GOES-R GS will receive and process, in real time, vast quantities of weather and environmental data from the next generation of GOES-R weather satellites, and will distribute more accurate and timely products to more than 10,000 direct users.
These new products aim to improve the ability of weather forecasters to more accurately predict dangerous weather. The Harris GOES-R GS team will design, develop, deploy and maintain the ground segment, and will provide command and control of the operational satellites.
"The close proximity of our new program office to the facilities of NOAA and other federal agencies here in the Maryland-DC-Virginia area helps to develop the collaborative relationships and face-to-face communications that ensure optimum program success," said Ray Thorpe, vice president of GOES-R programs for Harris Government Communications Systems.
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