NASA has awarded the Southwest Research Institute a $26.1 million contract to build two two magnetometer instruments for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather program.
Work under the 10-year agreement will be performed at the selected contractor’s facility in San Antonio, Texas, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said Monday.
Mission Operations Support Services
The Southwest Research Institute will also perform design, analysis, development, fabrication, integration, test, verification and evaluation services for the NOAA instruments. In addition, the company will provide supply and maintenance support for ground equipment and post-launch mission operations support at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility.
Mitigating Space Weather Impacts
When they become operational, the magnetometer instruments will measure the interplanetary magnetic field carried by the solar wind and supply data to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which releases forecasts and alerts to help mitigate space weather impacts, including electric power outages and disruptions to communications and navigation systems.
The space weather magnetometer instruments will support the Lagrange 1 Series project, which is part of NOAA’s Space Weather Next program. NASA and NOAA are managing the development, launch, testing and operation of satellites under the project.
