Indra Leads Development And Provision Of The Ground Segment Of Satellite Paz

Madrid, Spain (SPX) Nov 29, 2011

The significance and the demanding nature of the PAZ programme's technology will prove the company's capacity to lead the most rigorous teledetection projects and will increase the company's competitiveness in other markets.

Indra will lead the development and supply of the whole ground segment of the Earth Observation satellite Paz. The contracts awarded to Indra by INTA, an organ of the Ministry of Defence, amount to 9M euros. The execution period of the project is 24 months and once delivered the segment will be ready to enter service.

The company will integrate all subsystems which will manage from the ground of what will be Spain's most complex satellite ever built. This project will help boost Indra's possibilities for future similar projects in Europe or in the rest of the countries.

The ground segment will control the satellite and the radar sensor of Paz. Besides this, it will generate, validate, calibrate, store and disseminate the rendered images. Indra will integrate all the systems to be installed at INTA, Torrejon and Maspalomas and at the Defence Data Center located at the Aerospace Observation Systems Centre (CESAEROB), Torrejon air base.

In addition to this, the company will be in charge of the management,system engineering, validation and verification of the ground system for the success of the mission. It will also deliver training so that operators can get familiar with the technology.

Big Black throws a party

     A KH-7 on display at the NRO’s 50th anniversary party Saturday night. 

(credit: D. Day) 

by Dwayne A. Day

Monday, September 19, 2011

On Saturday night the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a major bash at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport. The spooks definitely know how to throw a party.

The event was remarkable in some ways because for the first 31 years of its life the NRO was a secret organization and the government did not even admit that it existed—blacker than black. But in the past 20 years the office, by fits and starts, revealed more of what it does. Today although most of its current operations remain classified, the NRO acknowledges the broad outlines of its activities, taking images and intercepting signals using sophisticated and expensive satellites. The NRO has had its share of scandals in the past couple of decades, some of which became public, but lately it seems to be on a roll with a number of programmatic successes, and so they held a party, and have something to celebrate.

Spy satellite hardware on display. (credit: D. Day) 

Officially sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the event was attended by approximately 4,000 people who enjoyed (excellent) catered food, an open bar, an orchestra, and several fortunately not-terribly-long-winded speeches. But the highlight of the event (for me, anyway) was the declassification of two major Cold War-era reconnaissance satellite programs, the KH-7 and KH-8 GAMBIT and the KH-9 HEXAGON (see “Flashlights in the dark”, The Space Review, September 12, 2011). The NRO even brought in things to show off—an engineering mockup of the massive KH-9 and what is apparently a leftover flight version of the KH-7, which ceased operations in the latter half of the 1960s. Both objects were viewable for only one day, although only the KH-9 was open to viewing by the general public during the day (the KH-7 could be seen by visitors who went up to a museum walkway).