The U.S. Geological Survey has awarded a General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) business unit a potential 10-year, $155 million contract to provide ground-based flight and mission operations support for the Landsat 8 satellite.
General Dynamics Mission Systems will also develop and integrate a Landsat multisatellite operations facility at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland under the contract that has a five-year base term and five option years, the company said Thursday.
“With this contract, General Dynamics steps into the prime systems integrator position for ground-based space mission management, flight operations and mission operations centers,” said Manny Mora, vice president and general manager of space and intelligence systems at General Dynamics Mission Systems.
The contract also paves the way for GDMS to help provide flight operations support once USGS launches Landsat 9 in 2020.
Launched in 1966, the Landsat project is a joint program of NASA and USGS that works to collect space-based land remote sensing data in support of agriculture, global change, geology and forestry research as well as disaster relief and other emergency response missions.
