JAKARTA – NASA, representing the US National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), awarded Lockheed Martin a contract on September 17 to develop instruments to map lightning.
The contract under NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) program is worth approximately US$297.1 million, or approximately Rs. 4.5 trillion. This contract period reaches 15 years with an operational period of 10 years and a storage period of 5 years in orbit.
On its official website, NASA explained that the lightning mapping instrument development contract includes the manufacturing of two instruments for the flight as well as the possibility of two additional units. The instrument will be manufactured at two Lockheed Martin facilities and the Goddard Space Flight Center.
“The scope of this contract covers the tasks and deliverables necessary to design, analyze, develop, create, integrate, test, verify, and evaluate lightning mapping instruments,” NASA said in its report.
The development of this instrument will enhance the performance of GeoXO Lightning Mapper instruments. The technology is expected to detect, sense and measure the intensity, duration and range of lightning strikes throughout the hemisphere.
As a monitoring instrument of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-R (GejES-R), the device will analyze major storms that may occur, increase the warning wait time for hazardous weather conditions, to give preliminary indications of lightning strikes.
“The data will be used to predict storm intensity, detect and respond to wildfires, estimate precipitation, and eliminate flight hazards,” NASA explained. “The data is also available more frequently than local radars and closes the radar coverage gap.”
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