NASA Selects
Contractor For Landsat Data Continuity Mission Spacecraft
(22 April 2008) NASA has selected
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, Inc., to build the Landsat Data
Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft.
Under the terms of the US$
116,306,179 delivery order, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems will
be responsible for the design and fabrication of the LDCM spacecraft bus,
integration of the government furnished instruments, satellite-level testing,
on-orbit satellite check-out, and continuing on-orbit engineering support. They
also will provide a spacecraft/observatory simulator.
LDCM is a
component of the Landsat Program conducted jointly by NASA and the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) of the Department of Interior. NASA is providing the
LDCM spacecraft, the instruments, the launch vehicle, and the mission
operations element of the ground system. USGS is providing the mission
operations center and ground processing systems, as well as the flight
operations team.
The delivery order was awarded under NASA's Rapid II
Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Contract. The Rapid II contract is for
core spacecraft systems, with non-standard services such as operations, launch
services, components and studies to meet the government's space science, Earth
science and technology needs.
The contract includes fabrication and
testing of the spacecraft with mission specific design modifications;
generation of interface control documents, instrument and full spacecraft
integration; testing, shipment to the launch site, launch vehicle integration
support and on-orbit checkout.
With a five-year design lifetime, the
LDCM satellite will continue the series of measurements begun with the
Landsat-1 mission for the collection, archiving and distribution of
multi-spectral imagery. This imagery will provide global, synoptic, and
repetitive coverage of the Earth's land surfaces at a scale where natural and
human-induced changes can be detected, differentiated, characterised and
monitored over time.
The LDCM goal is consistent with the Landsat
programmatic goals derived from the Land Remote Sensing Act of 1992. This
policy requires that the Landsat Program provide data into the future that is
sufficiently consistent with previous Landsat data to allow the detection and
quantitative characterisation of changes in or on the land surface of the
globe.
The LDCM was conceived as a follow-on mission to the highly
successful Landsat series of missions that have provided coverage of the
Earth's continental surfaces since 1972. The data from these missions
constitute the longest continuous record of the Earth's surface as seen from
space.
(source: NASA)
