WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has issued a request for information for the primary sensor on its next-generation weather satellite, a first step toward acquiring the hardware.
In a Feb. 19 posting on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the service said it intends to award a fixed-price contract for “a cost effective space-based passive microwave sensor” for the Weather Satellite Follow-on. The notice solicits industry input on sensor capabilities, cost and risk.
The Weather Satellite Follow-on, which will replace the Air Force’s venerable Defense Meteorological Satellite System spacecraft, will consist of a single satellite carrying two or three instruments that would launch into sun-synchronous orbit in 2021 or 2022. The program is expected to cost about $856 million, according to Air Force budget documents.
The Air Force will rely on the satellite to fill three main data requirements: ocean-surface wind speed and direction, tropical cyclone intensity, and information on charged particles in space with the potential to affect low-orbiting satellites. The first two measurements could be taken using the same microwave payload, according to the request for information.
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According to the budget documents, Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, the Naval Research Laboratory and the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory have done study work on the microwave instrument.
Air Force officials have said the program could be managed by the service’s rapid-response space development shop known as the Operationally Responsive Space Office.
The service will hold an industry day on the sensor March 10.
