General Dynamics Awarded $4 Million for Landsat Data Continuity Mission Integration

General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), has been awarded a five-year, $4 million contract by the Hammers Company, Inc., to provide the systems engineering and integration services needed to build the ground-based command and control system for the Mission Operations Element (MOE) of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite.

The Hammers Company, Inc., of Greenbelt, Md., is the prime contractor with the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center for the LDCM-MOE command and control system.

General Dynamics C4 Systems will ensure that LDCM-MOE ground systems are compatible with those aboard the new LDCM satellite, which is being built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (Fairfax, Va.) under a separate contract to NASA. LDCM is scheduled to be launched in 2011.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission will succeed the current Landsat 7 mission and provide expanded detection, differentiation and characterization of manmade and natural changes of global land surfaces.

The Mission Operations Element will reside in the LDCM mission operations center at the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Data Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. The MOE system will handle spacecraft command and control, memory management, mission planning and scheduling and orbit dynamics.

Since the first Landsat satellite, Landsat 1, was launched in 1972, Landsat satellites have continuously captured images of the Earth’s land surface as seen from space. Used by agriculture, education, business, science and government agencies, Landsat imagery supports global-change research and applications.

General Dynamics C4 Systems is a leading integrator of secure communication and information systems and technology. With more than 10,000 employees worldwide, the company specializes in command and control, communications networking, computing and information assurance for defense, government and select commercial customers in the United States and abroad.