L3Harris Technologies Receives $119 Million Space Force Contract for GEODSS

GEODSS performs its mission using a one-meter telescope that is equipped with a highly sensitive digital camera technology, known as Deep STARE. The operational GEODSS sites have three telescopes that are used in conjunction with each other or

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Aerospace and Defense Review | Friday, May 27, 2022

GEODSS performs its mission using a one-meter telescope that is equipped with a highly sensitive digital camera technology, known as Deep STARE. The operational GEODSS sites have three telescopes that are used in conjunction with each other or separately.

FREMONT, CA: L3Harris Technologies received a $119.1 million contract to upgrade and expand the network of U.S. military telescopes known as the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System that track objects in geostationary orbits.

The contract was awarded by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center which will fund upgrades to existing GEODSS sensors, and the design of new ground-based optical sensors in European and Pacific sites. The work is to be completed by June 2024. The contract will be worth $218 million if all options are exercised to build the two new sites in Spain and Australia.

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L3Harris is responsible for maintaining and modernizing the military’s network of space surveillance sensors under a 10-year $1.2 billion contract awarded in February 2020 known as MOSSAIC, short for maintenance of space situational awareness integrated capabilities.

The Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System, or GEODSS, is an optical space surveillance system that detects, tracks, identifies and reports on deep-space man-made objects in the Earth’s orbit.

The GEODSS system can track objects as small as a basketball more than 20,000 miles away and is a vital part of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Surveillance Network (SSN). More than 2,500 objects, including geostationary communication satellites, are in deep space orbits varying in altitude from 10,000 to 45,000 kilometres from Earth.

There are currently three GEODSS sites — on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; and in Maui, Hawaii.

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