ITT has announced that it has passed a key milestone with the successful completion of the Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Navigation Payload Element (NPE) the company is developing for the U.S. Air Force’s Global Positioning System (GPS) program, GPS III.
ITT is a major teammate on the Lockheed Martin team that was selected in May 2008 by the U.S. Air Force to build the next-generation GPS III program.
"ITT continues to make tremendous progress toward delivery of this critical GPS component," said Mark Pisani, vice president and general manager of Positioning, Navigation and Timing Systems at ITT Geospatial Systems.
"Our company is committed to providing our warfighting and civilian users more accurate and reliable capabilities that improve interoperability and jam resistance. Having completed this significant milestone, we stand ready to support the next major program milestone, the Lockheed Martin Space Vehicle CDR, scheduled for August."
ITT integrates and tests the components in the NPE on to the GPS III Space Vehicle flight panel for delivery to Lockheed Martin which is then assembled in to the Space Vehicle for testing. The NPE consists of several transmitter units and the mission data unit, both designed and built by ITT; Atomic Frequency Time Standard; passive RF components and various harnesses and cables.
The NPE generates and transmits all of the navigation signals for military and civil users and maintains the highly precise timing for navigation performance. The NPE CDR was conducted at ITT’s facilities in Clifton, N.J. on June 24, 2010, and represents the successful culmination of the CDRs of all 11 major components of the NPE.
The CDR demonstrated that the NPE design meets all program requirements, and showed complete compliance with the rigorous GPS III mission assurance standards. Based on the thorough review of the hardware designs, the NPE is ready to proceed to the manufacturing phase of the program.
The next generation of GPS IIIA satellites will deliver significant improvements over current GPS space vehicles, and will improve position, navigation, and timing services for the warfighter and civil users worldwide, providing capabilities yielding superior system security, accuracy and reliability.
"The successful completion of the NPE CDR represents a significant achievement for the GPS III program and demonstrates the strong teaming relationship between ITT and Lockheed Martin, and the commitment to mission success and customer satisfaction" said Dave Podlesney, Lockheed Martin GPS III Program Director.
Lt. Col. Donald Frew, GPS III Squadron Commander, agrees that "having successfully met all the criteria for the NPE CDR completion, Lockheed Martin and ITT realized a key milestone on the path to delivering a robust, fully compliant navigation and timing system that is a critical component of the GPS IIIA space vehicle. Both Lockheed Martin and ITT deserve recognition for this key partnership and major achievement."
Follow us on Twitter.