In the company’s second task order under a $16 million indefinite-quantity, indefinite-delivery contract it got from NASA in December, Astrotech Space Operations will perform payload processing services for the agency’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, an Earth-observing climate change observatory scheduled to launch in 2014, the company said in a March 15 press release.
Astrotech will perform payload processing at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where SMAP is scheduled to launch in late October 2014 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket. The company did not quantify the value of the latest task order under its December contract with NASA.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is managing the SMAP mission for NASA.
