National Polar-orbiting Operation Environmental Satellite System.

The NPP Project is a joint effort of the National Polar-orbiting Operational 

Environmental satellite system (NPOESS) Integrated Program Office (IPO), the National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA. 

The NPP spacecraft will be an Earth observing satellite carrying four instruments into a 

polar, sun-synchronous, 824 km orbit. NPP will be launched on a Delta II launch vehicle. 

The design lifetime of the NPP spacecraft is 5 years. 

Instruments 

The following instruments will be a part of the NP spacecraft: 

• The Visible-Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument is a 

multispectral scanning radiometer with 3000 km swath width and derives its 

heritage from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Optical 

Line Scanner (OLS), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiomenter 

(MODIS), and Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWIFS). 

• The Cross Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) instrument is a Michelson 

interferometer. Its heritage is the High Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS), 

Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding 

Interferometer (IASI) radiometer. It is co-registered with the Advanced 

Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and is designed to work in conjunction 

with it. 

• The ATMS instrument is a passive microwave radiometer with a swath width of 

2300 km. Its heritage is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) A1/A2 

and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB). 

• The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) measures solar scattered radiation 

to map the vertical and horizontal distribution of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere 

using a nadir ultra-violet (UV) sensor and limb-scanning UV/visible (VIS) 

sensors. Its heritage is the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet  (SBUV)/2 radiometer, 

the Total ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), the Shuttle ozone Limb Scatter 

Experiment (SOLSE) and the Limb Ozone Retrieval Experiment (LORE).

The NPP Mission Success is determined by its capabilities to provide continuation of a 

group of earth system observations initiated by the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra, 

Aqua and Aura missions. The NPP Mission Success is also judged by its ability to reduce 

the risks associated with its advance observational capabilities as they are being 

transitioned from the NASA research program into the NPOESS operational program in 

support of both the Department of Defense (DoD) and NOAA. These include pre- 

operational risk reduction demonstration and validation for selected NPOESS 

instruments, and algorithms, as well as ground data processing, archive and distribution. 

Together these data records will fulfill the U.S. Climate Change Research Program 

(CCRP) objectives of understanding the earth’s climate system and its variability on a 

decadal basis. 

The specific NASA science criteria are: 

1. Continue vertical temperature and moisture profiles of the Earth’s atmosphere 

with accuracy, extent, and frequency consistent with those made with the Aqua 

satellite sensors. 

2. Continue a record of sea surface temperature with accuracy, extent and frequency 

consistent with those made with Terra and Aqua sensors. 

3. Continue a record of surface biophysical and climatic parameters with accuracy, 

extent and frequency consistent with those made with Terra and Aqua sensors. 

4. Continue a record of cloud and aerosol properties with accuracy, extent, and 

frequency consistent with those made with Terra and Aqua sensors. 

5. Continue a record of ozone total column abundance and vertical profile with 

accuracy, extent, and frequency consistent with those made with previous US 

spacecraft making comparable measurements.

Nano Satellite

Nano Satellite

LOGAN, Utah — There is big news on the small satellite front. From super-secret agencies and the U.S. military to academia and private firms, as well as world space agencies and NASA, ultra-small satellites are the big thing.

In sizing up "smallsats," there are a range of classifications in the less-than-500- kilogram department, be they minisatellites, microsatellites, nanosatellites, picosatellites, palm-size CubeSats, even the diminutive Femto satellite, weighing in at less than 100 grams.

Cornell University has begun to delve into a postage stamp-size "satellite on a chip" design, called Sprite, envisioning a swarm of these tiny probes exploring planetary atmospheres for organic compounds.

Call them a powerful force in the universe. Smallsats have already shown their ability to monitor disasters, study Earth’s environment and support agriculture, cartography and earth science missions.

Smallsats are part of the solution — when they used to be a distraction, said Matt Bille, an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton in Colorado Springs, Colo.

So, what does this foretell?"The knowledge of how to make and use smallsats has passed the tipping point," Bille told SPACE.com. "It exists worldwide and has fostered a global generation of satellite builders and engineers. It used to be only a few organizations could build a satellite. Now, a smart teenager with a CubeSat kit and a soldering iron is a space agency. We’ve only begun to grasp the implications of that."

"What this means for the future is that use of smallsats and satellites in general will only increase. The proliferation of smallsat capabilities has unleashed the most powerful force in the universe — human creativity," Bille said.

That was the message from Bille, joined by about 1,100 participants who gathered here Aug. 8-11 at Utah State University. The meeting was used to reflect upon 25 years of smallsat progress and what’s ahead — a gathering of experts convened by Utah State University and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

Low-cost high-tech

Looking back over thelast few decades and gazing forward was Siegfried Janson, a senior scientist at The Aerospace Corp. in Los Angeles.

Janson flagged the onslaught of advances in micro- and nanoelectronics, microelectromechanical (MEM) systems, solar cell technologies, global positioning systems, and the Internet itself. Toss in for good measure personal computers, he said, stuffed with multiple processors, graphic cards, pepped up with more and more memory.

All that low-cost high tech has allowed small teams to blueprint, build and fly progressively smaller satellites with ever-increasing capacity, Janson told the audience.

Janson anticipates that there will be a wider diversity of missions by highly capable small satellites, like formation flying to create large but virtual antenna sizes to make possible enhanced imaging from space.

Collaboration

"Advancement of the technologies is no longer the primary issue," said Pat Patterson, chairman of the smallsat conference and director of the strategic and military space division at Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. "It’s still the mission that matters. It has to give the customer some value," he told SPACE.com.

"It’s kind of all coming together," Patterson said, pointing to smallsat attitude- control devices, batteries and solar cells, new ways to beat the heat and cold of space, coupled with smaller, lower-costing launchers.

Collaboration is the key, said Doug Sinclair, owner of Sinclair Interplanetary in Toronto, Canada. He advised that universities building CubeSats need to focus on what they do best and rely on other groups to supply other resources.

"For instance, exchange a radio for a computer. Both groups end up with a CubeSat, but now they’ve got much better odds of succeeding," Sinclair said.

Common utility

As for what’s the future of smallsats, there will be growth, new missions, and new ways of working together, said Bille,expressing his own views and not speaking for Booz Allen Hamilton policy. "CubeSats are like the personal computer of this industry."

Hunsaker’s personal crystal ball predicts networked satellites with individual IP addresses controlled through the Internet and providing individualized positioning, communications, social and multimedia capability."Perhaps just like personal computing and cell phones that have common utility among individual consumers today, smallsats will also follow that trend," said colleague Tom Hunsaker, also an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Bille concluded: “The age of microspacecraft is on solid ground now. There’s a definite trend toward putting small things together to do big accomplishments.”

Boeing- CST-100 & GEOINT

According to a September 15th press release, the agreement states that Boeing is continuing to advance its design for the CST-100 spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Crew Development Space Act Agreement. In mid-July, Boeing released several artist's renderings of it's CST(Crew Space Transportation)-100 spacecraft which will deliver it's passengers to both the ISS and the Bigelow Aerospace Orbital Space Complex (image below). The CST-100 is a bit larger than Apollo but smaller than Orion, with the ability to be able to launch on several different rockets including the Atlas, Delta and Falcon. The price hasn't quite been set for a seat on the CST-100 and the co-founder of Space Adventures, Eric Anderson, stated that the company isn't quite ready to talk about the price yet. They did however state that the pricing matrix would be competitive to the current Russian launches on the Soyuz spacecraft which is currently used by Space Adventures. To give you an idea, the Canadian billionaire, Guy Laliberte ponied up about $40 million for his last trip to the International Space Station. Find out a bit more about all of the extended training that he had to go through in order to qualify for his trip by clicking here. Mr. Laliberte had to undergo almost 200 days of intense training to prepare for this spaceflight to the Space Station -- Find out a bit more about the training by reading extracts from Guy's blog. If you navigate around the Space Adventures website, you can find lots of interesting videos, demonstrations and even video blogs and recordings from past passengers.

So, although the pricing will most likely be far to much for an average individual to reserve a seat, it's like anything else—pricing eventually goes down as more players enter into the game. Perhaps in a couple decades, pricing might be a bit more reasonable, and we'll all be headed into orbit.

The Company's newest technology 

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] will demo its geospatial data management technologies for the Intelligence Community, defense and national security customers at the GEOINT Symposium, October 16-19 in San Antonio, Texas. The Boeing exhibit will introduce the company’s newest “Human Geography” technology. 

“The Boeing Human Geography solution provides community data in categories such as political ideology, ethnicity, cultural habits, language, education and health care — and how these have contributed to the intelligence picture,” said Dewey Houck, Intelligence Systems Group vice president. “It offers historical trends and patterns to help give the analyst a holistic understanding of nations and regions by broadening and deepening their analytic expertise.” In addition to Human Geography, the Boeing exhibit at Booth 313 also will feature the following technologies: 

• TAC – An analytical tool that enables real-time collaborative analysis through the persistent querying of streaming and stored data, giving users immediate access to data relevant to their topic of interest
• 3-D Ladar – A mapping capability that uses laser light technology to produce a precise 3-D image of the terrain. The laser radar, or ladar, weighs less than 20 pounds (8 kg), enabling multi-platform use and supporting a variety of surveillance and sensing applications
• SAR Agility – The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image analysis tool draws on the power of mass-market Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to provide real-time processing and user interaction, resulting in fast and comprehensive extraction of actionable information from complex SAR imagery

Boeing also will showcase its comprehensive, web-based GEOINT source-discovery solution. This solution allows online, on-demand access to search across internal and external data sources, as well as different classification levels, using Boeing eXMeritus HardwareWall and a variety of industry standard protocols and messaging formats.