JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Lockheed Martin Space has won a contract change worth up to $977.6 million to fund work for the U.S. military developing advanced missile-launch detection satellites.
The Jefferson County-based company has been designing and building three space vehicles for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Geosynchronous System under a contract originally written by the U.S. Air Force and worth as much as $8.2 billion.
The satellites are scheduled to be launched by 2028.
New funds were added under a contract modification made public June 21 and handled by the space sensing unit of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command in Los Angeles.
The money covers post-launch work through July 31, 2029, for “on-orbit developmental and operational testing, calibration, and tuning of the Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) main mission payload” on two of the satellites, plus starting the satellites’ operations and supporting defense contractors working with the satellites in orbit, the contract said.
Nearly $183.7 million for the modification is obligated in the current fiscal year’s federal budget.
The work is expected to take place at Lockheed Martin Space locations in Aurora and Boulder and in Sunnyvale, California, the Space Force said.
> Read the full story at the Denver Business Journal.
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