Raytheon wins $1 billion NPOESS contract.

Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) has been awarded a contract for work on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) by NPOESS prime contractor TRW. The value to Raytheon is approximately $1 billion over the life of the program, under terms of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), production, and operations and support (O&S) contract.

NPOESS merges the meteorological and earth observation functions of three U.S. government agencies--NOAA, Department of Defense (DoD) and NASA. The program provides polar-orbiting remote sensing capability, while achieving cost savings by converging existing government satellite programs.

Raytheon is slated to provide the entire ground system for NPOESS, including the Command, Control, and Communications Segment (C3S) and the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS). Raytheon's IDPS software architecture will deliver massive amounts of data to produce weather analyses and information products in support of forecasting, scientific research and tactical users. Raytheon's C3 Segment manages the overall mission, including active operation and accounting of mission data, delivery of sensor data to the IDPS, and satellite command and control.

Raytheon is also developing and manufacturing the NPOESS primary electro- optical imaging sensor, the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), at its Santa Barbara, Calif. facility, awarded under a separate contract.

"NPOESS is a tremendous victory for Raytheon," said Ray Kolibaba, vice president and site executive of the company's Aurora, Colo. business campus. "Using the vast resources and talent across multiple Raytheon locations, we will deliver an integrated team effort to bring the best capabilities and technology to support our government customer and TRW," he added.

The Raytheon NPOESS team is based at the company's Aurora, Colo. business campus. Up to 450 Raytheon employees will work on the program. Other Raytheon sites contributing to the effort include Omaha, Neb., Colorado Springs, Colo., Indianapolis, Ind., Lanham, Md., Landover, Md., and Garland, Texas.

With headquarters in Lexington, Mass., Raytheon Company is a global technology leader in defense, government and commercial electronics, and business and special mission aircraft.