BAE Systems has secured a $365 million contract from NASA to build an air quality monitoring instrument for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Extended Observations satellite constellation.
The GeoXO Atmospheric Composition instrument is a hyperspectral spectrometer that will take hourly observations of air pollutants on Earth and provide data to improve air quality forecasting and monitoring, NASA said Wednesday.
The instrument will measure ultraviolet to visible light to track air pollutants emitted by sources such as transportation, power generation, volcanoes and wildfires and secondary pollutants in Earth’s atmosphere.
Under the contract, BAE will design, develop, integrate, test and maintain the instrument ground support equipment and support mission operations at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
The contractor will support on-orbit operations for 10 years and on-orbit storage for five years for each flight instrument.
Work will occur at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NOAA’s GeoXO will comprise three satellites to expand Earth observations provided by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-R constellation.
