GMV has announced it will provide support to The Hammers Company for a $14.9 million contract with NASA to build the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Mission Operations Element (MOE). The satellite ground segment software company will provide the following parts of the five-year contract:

+ The Mission Planning and Scheduling system including the command load generator based upon GMV's flexplan product.

+ Mission Analysis and Archiving system based upon GMV's archiva product.

+ Solid State Recorder Modeling derived from GMV's satellite memory modeling product called satMEM.

+ Systems engineering associated with these systems, as well as testing, installation, training and launch operations support.

"We are excited to be part of this high-caliber, winning team for such a strategic, national program," said Theresa Beech, managing director and vice president of business development for GMV.

"This win reflects GMV's robust product line and our company's ability to integrate highly complex systems seamlessly with maximum efficiency."

The MOE launch date is set tentatively for July 2011. The Hammers Company contract covers the design, development, integration, testing, delivery, and installation of the MOE; support for ground system and mission-level integration and test; support of operations readiness activities; engineering support during the launch and early-orbit period; and a period of sustaining engineering.

"We look forward to GMV's expert input on this prestigious NASA Landsat project," said Stephan R. Hammers of The Hammers Company. "We are confident in the ability of the GMV team to deliver and exceed our expectations."

Funding for the MOE is provided to NASA on a reimbursable basis by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) of the Department of Interior. LDCM is a component of the Landsat Program conducted jointly by NASA and the USGS.

LDCM continues the Landsat programmatic goals outlined by Congress in the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 (P.L. 102-555), which is to provide data into the future that is sufficiently consistent with previous Landsat data to allow the detection and quantitative characterization of changes in or on the land surface of the globe. LDCM was conceived as a follow-on mission to the Landsat series of missions that have provided coverage of the Earth's continental surfaces since 1972.