SAN FRANCISCO — Firefly Aerospace gained a freelance to release Quicksounder, a prototype for the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Management’s next-generation of environmental satellites in low-Earth orbit. The price of the award was once now not disclosed.
NASA awarded the contract to Texas-based Firefly on behalf of NOAA throughout the Challenge-Elegance Acquisition of Devoted and Rideshare (VADR) release services and products contract. Thru VADR, NASA awards fixed-price contracts for satellite tv for pc launches.
QuickSounder is the primary part of NOAA’s Close to Earth Orbit Community (NEON), a brand new era of polar-orbiting climate satellites. The undertaking is meant to assemble climate knowledge for lots of organizations together with the Nationwide Climate Carrier.
The Southwest Analysis Institute is development the QuickSounder satellite tv for pc to deal with an Complicated Era Microwave Sounder engineering construction unit refurbished by way of producer Northrop Grumman. QuickSounder is scheduled to release no previous than February 2026.
NOAA is operating with NASA to hurry up construction of small and medium-sized satellites to offer knowledge for climate forecasting, crisis control and local weather tracking. NASA will arrange the advance and release of the satellites. NOAA will supply investment and technical necessities, and arrange post-launch operations.
VADR is a fixed-price indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with a five-year ordering duration and a most overall price throughout all contracts of $300 million.
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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews founded in San Francisco.
Debra earned a bachelor’s level in communications from the College of California, Berkeley, and a grasp’s level in Journalism from Northwestern College. She…
Extra by way of Debra Werner
