COLORADO SPRINGS — Powerful GPS III satellites that were supposed to launch this year now have a chance of making it to orbit in 2017, U.S. Space Command leader Gen. John E. Hyten said Thursday.
“The good news is we are going through buildup now, and everything is progressing well,” Hyten said during a news conference at the 31st International Space Symposium. “The GPS III program is now moving again. Unfortunately we’re about two years behind.”
GPS III will provide global positioning services for military and civilian use. The satellites are expected to provide three times the accuracy and improve coverage in hard-to-reach areas.
Littleton-based Lockheed Martin is under contract to build the first eight GPS III satellites. The Air Force expects to take delivery of the first satellite in August 2016 for a 2017 launch.
. The system was producing signal interference, which prevented Lockheed Martin from integrating it into the satellite.
“I was pretty upset with Exelis for a long time,” Hyten said. “We had this beautiful GPS III production line built up south of Denver, and we had satellites built up and just waiting.”
Lockheed Martin received about $1.4 billion for production of the first four satellites, the first of which recently completed assembly and is preparing for testing.
“We have a whole space vehicle now, and that’s good,” Lockheed Martin spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said. ” We’re looking forward to putting it into environmental tests this summer — that’s the critical next step is to go through the environmental tests with the satellite and come out of that successfully.”
Testing will begin early this summer and wrap up in the fall.
The Air Force has said the launch window for the satellites opens in August 2016, which offers Lockheed Martin some extra wiggle room.
“It’s the first satellite,” Eschenfelder said. “If we come up with issues, we’ll fix them.”
The Air Force also recently announced plans to award multiple contracts worth up to $6 million to companies who can build the next batch of GPS III satellites, according to SpaceNews.
Previous contracts were between $100 million and $200 million — a shift that reflects the new strategy of asking industry to bear the costs of up-front development, according to an .
Laura Keeney: 303-954-1337, lkeeney@denverpost.com or twitter.com/LauraKeeney
