Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., received a sole-source contract from NASA worth $48.5 million to build a second microwave imager for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, the U.S. space agency announced May 10.
Ball already was under contract to build a GPM microwave imager scheduled to fly in 2013 aboard the GPM Core Observatory. The duplicate instrument just ordered by NASA is planned to fly on a GPM partner-provided spacecraft in a low-inclination orbit with a targeted launch date of 2014, NASA said in a release.
GPM is an international satellite constellation spearheaded by the U.S. space agency to study global rain, snow and ice.
