Ball Aerospace Awarded Contract for Ion Velocity Meter

February 24, 2014

Matthew Monaghan

Data from the IVM instruments will be used to characterize the ionosphere, providing information related to applications involving radio wave propagation. (University of Texas at Dallas)

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been awarded a $5.8 million contract from the Defense Weather System Directorate at the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, CA, for the production of the Ion Velocity Meter (IVM) under the U.S. Air Force Space Situational Awareness Environmental Monitoring program to fly aboard COSMIC-2, the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-2. The IVM instrument was originally designed by the University of Texas at Dallas. Ball Aerospace is under contract to build five replicas of the instrument under a firm fixed-priced contract. COSMIC-2, a joint follow-on mission between Taiwan and U.S. agencies to launch a constellation of six satellites into low-inclination orbits in late 2015, will provide an increase in the number of atmospheric and ionospheric observations.