WASHINGTON, 15 March 2005. NASA has selected Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Broomfield, Colo. for the development, fabrication, pre-launch and post-launch support for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument.
The period of performance of this Cost-Plus-Award Incentive Fee contract is seven years, nine months. The total contract value may be up to $100 million.
The GMI is a conical-scan microwave radiometer. This instrument will fly on the GPM Core spacecraft. A second, optional GMI may be acquired by NASA for a GPM constellation spacecraft. GPM is a multinational collaborative effort to measure global precipitation. The GMI instrument will be used to make calibrated, radiometric measurements from space at multiple microwave frequencies and polarizations.
"The knowledge of amount and distribution of precipitation is needed worldwide to assess the quantity and quality of fresh water resources for food and fiber production, human consumption, and other societal needs," said NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Ghassem Asrar. "The GPM constellation will take full advantage of international research and operational environmental satellites to bring us global measurements of precipitation."
For more information, see http://gpm.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html, or www.nasa.gov/, or http://gpm.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html.
