ACADEMIA

Silicon Graphics announced today that Raytheon Company has selected SGI to work on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) "R" Series program. SGI is supporting the program definition and risk reduction phase of the GOES-R program. In October 2005, Raytheon and prime contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation were awarded a six-month GOES-R program definition and risk reduction contract by NOAA. During the PDRR phase, the team will produce trade studies comparing the performance and cost of alternative system architectures, develop system definition through allocating requirements and operational functions, initiate system and segment designs for products to be developed in the subsequent program phase, execute steps to reduce key risk areas and demonstrate the team's ability to meet the government's end-to-end system performance requirements for NOAA's missions. GOES-R will collect up to 100 times more data and scan the Earth three-to- five times faster than previous systems, providing improved spatial, spectral and temporal resolution. These advances will provide more advanced environmental products and services that can be used for many applications, including hurricane track and intensity forecasts and monitoring of coastal waters for harmful algal bloom events and coastal resource management. Improved products and services are critical to NOAA's missions for monitoring weather and water, climate, oceans and ecosystems, and commerce and transportation. As part of a Teaming Agreement with Raytheon, SGI will provide support to Raytheon related to the provision of data processing hardware and system software, maintenance, and optimization of GOES-R specific applications on target platforms. Specific areas for SGI support are related to the Product Generation (PG) and Product Distribution (PD) elements of the Ground Segment (GS). An additional possible area of SGI support includes the User Interface (UI) element. GOES-R, which is currently under development with first launch scheduled for late 2012, is a significant technological advancement for NOAA in terms of the quality and quantity of meteorological and environmental satellite data that will be available to the country. The combined instrument downlink data rate will increase by a factor of 60. The amount of environmental data being rebroadcast to users throughout the hemisphere will increase by an order of magnitude and information products will increase from 43 to more than 150. "This is the latest collaboration between our two companies bringing together Raytheon's expertise in the design, development and integration of large complex environmental systems and SGI's core competencies in high- performance computing and storage technology," said Anthony Robbins, president, SGI Federal. "With the most active and most costly hurricane season on record just behind us, never before in our nation's history has the need for a next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system been greater for hurricane tracking, among other mission-critical NOAA applications."