Raytheon says that the company has completed a significant milestone—the factory acceptance test—of the command, control, and communications segment for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, for the next-generation weather satellite. An integrated Raytheon-Northrop Grumman team completed six months of testing on the C3 segment, clearing the way for Raytheon to ship hardware out for installation at 10 sites—including the data processing center at Offutt AFB, Neb.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.