Battery maker Saft of Cockeysville, Md., said Jan. 11 it is preparing to deliver 12 battery packs of high-energy lithium-ion space batteries to Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems for use on the three Boeing 702HP satellites the El Segundo, Calif.-based company is building for Inmarsat.
The batteries were ordered under a five-year, multimillion-dollar contract Boeing signed with Saft in 2009.
In a separate announcement, Northrop Grumman Electronic System of Woodland Hills, Calif., said that its Scalable Space Inertial Reference Unit, or Scalable SIRU, has been selected by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems as the “inertial reference unit of choice” for the satellite platforms it builds.
Under a strategic agreement between the two companies, the Scalable SIRU will be included as part of the baseline design for Boeing satellites for the next two years.
Northrop’s Scalable SIRU was recently launched aboard the Boeing-built SkyTerra 1 mobile communications satellite.
