DENVER, 31 Oct. 2005. Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $10 million, six-month contract by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the Program Definition and Risk Reduction (PDRR) phase of the nation's next-generation environmental satellite system, GOES-R. The contract has two options priced at an additional $10 million each.

NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program has a 30-year history of success in observing and predicting the intensity and track of severe storms in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, providing data for daily and long-range weather forecasting, and climate studies. In addition to the Earth-observing instruments, the GOES satellites also carry solar instruments that provide advance warning of events on the Sun, such as solar flares, that can impact life on Earth.