Space News by Debra Werner — January 9, 2019
Lockheed Martin, prime contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) R Series, has halted work on GOES-T, the next spacecraft scheduled to launch, and turned its attention to successor GOES-U as it waits for Harris Corp. to complete modification of the spacecraft’s primary instrument, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI).
“It’s nice to have all the hardware for two vehicles,†Tim Gasparrini, GOES-R program manager for Lockheed Martin Space, told SpaceNews. “I can swap it out instead of waiting.â€
Lockheed Martin had finished assembling the GOES-T spacecraft last year and was preparing for environmental testing when NOAA directed the company to halt work due to problems with ABI on the GOES-17 satellite launched in March 2018. During on-orbit checkout, NOAA discovered ABI’s infrared channels were not working as designed because of cooling problems:
https://spacenews.com/new-noaa-weather-satellite-suffers-instrument-anomaly/More:
https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-goes-t-u/
