Harris Corporation’s Fourth Advanced Baseline Imager Complete and Ready for Weather Satellite Integration

Harris Corporation’s (NYSE:HRS) fourth Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) has completed a pre-ship review with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA. The instrument now is complete and will be ready for future integration onto the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – U Series (GOES-U) spacecraft, which is part of NOAA’s next-generation weather satellite series.

ABI is the world’s most advanced geostationary weather instrument. It captures continuous images of Earth – scanning the entire globe in five minutes versus 26 minutes with the currently operational GOES satellites. For rapidly changing events like thunderstorms, hurricanes, or fires, ABI can take images as often as every 30 seconds.

“Every second counts during severe weather events. ABI can scan a thunderstorm 22,300 miles from Earth in the same time as it takes to snap and upload a selfie to social media,” said Eric Webster, vice president, Harris Environmental Solutions. “ABI will improve every aspect of severe weather forecasting, which will help save lives and property.”

ABI also will provide images of conditions current GOES satellites cannot including dust, sea ice, volcanic ash, fog, clouds, water vapor, vegetation, winds and carbon dioxide.

An international version of ABI is operational over Japan on board the Himawari-8 satellite, where it has tracked storms like Typhoons Nepartak and Soudelor. Harris has built seven ABIs: four for the United States, two for Japan, and one for South Korea. Harris also built the ground system for NOAA’s GOES-R series of satellites, which will command and control the satellites and all instruments on board, and process 60 times more data than today’s GOES satellites. The ground system will make it possible for meteorologists to receive critical weather data in 30 seconds by using a customized high-speed processing infrastructure designed to reduce information bottlenecks caused by the high data volume.

The first GOES-R satellite carrying the ABI is expected to launch Nov. 4 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The next in the series, GOES-S, is expected to launch in 2018; followed by GOES-T in 2019 and GOES-U in 2024.

About Harris Corporation

Harris Corporation is a leading technology innovator, solving customers’ toughest mission-critical challenges by providing solutions that connect, inform and protect. Harris supports customers in more than 100 countries and has approximately $7.5 billion in annual revenue and 21,000 employees worldwide. The company is organized into four business segments: Communication Systems, Space and Intelligence Systems, Electronic Systems and Critical Networks. Learn more at harris.com.

Contacts:

Space and Intelligence Systems
Kristin P. Jones, 571-419-4718
kristin.jones@harris.com
or
Harris Corporation
Jim Burke, 321-727-9131
jim.burke@harris.com

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