A Winning Task For SPACEHAB Just To Wade Through Project Parsing

The commercial space products and services endeavors by SPACEHAB, Inc. (NASDAW:SPAB) have certainly won additional acclaim… and revenue. The company has announced their Astrotech Space Operations subsidiary has won the first fully funded task order under the recently awarded Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) indefinite delivery, indefinite quality (gasping for breath…) indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract for the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason 2. (Phew!)



This $35 million award is for payload processing support on several upcoming NASA spacecraft missions. Each must be individually completed. OSTM is scheduled to launch from VAFB in mid-2008. This is the nextgen ocean altimetry mission to extend the time series of sea surface topography measures started by TOPEX/Poseidon and then continued by Jason-1 that was launched in 2001.



A four-partner mission between (deep breath…) NASA/JPL, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will measure sea surface height to an accuracy of less than 4 cm every ten days. This should help scientists to better understand ocean circulation and the effect on global climate—Houston, Texas—August 29, 2007