Engineering, Technology and Mission Assurance
Leveraging our defense technology for sustainability
On January 4, 2012, a “Blue Marble” image of the Earth was taken from the Raytheon VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s recently launched Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP. In order to capture the daily global images, VIIRS rises from the south and sets in the north on the daylight side of Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit. This path allows for consistent image angles, lighting and data capture. Successive orbits overlap one another throughout the day to acquire swaths measuring 1,900 miles across, resulting in a complete image of the globe.
Raytheon’s engineers and scientists successfully leverage our state-of-the-art defense technologies in a number of applications focused on sustainability and safety.
Advanced Sensing and Weather Prediction
The recently launched NASA National Preparatory Project spacecraft using the Raytheon Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor has produced its first images showing the earth in unprecedented sharpness and detail. VIIRS provides global imagery, land and sea surface temperature monitoring, cloud characterization and other key environmental data of great value to the weather and climate monitoring communities.
Raytheon also provided the new Common Ground System featuring a flexible design to manage nearly a terabyte of information daily to support enhanced environmental data records used by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency to fulfill their critical weather forecasting responsibilities.
Controlled Impact Rescue Tool™
Raytheon is providing the Controlled Impact Rescue Tool, a self-contained, safe and portable unit designed to aid fire departments, local and federal rescue agencies, and the military services to help save lives in disaster situations. The tool transmits pulverizing shock waves enabling rescuers to breach concrete structures and rescue people faster than with existing techniques.
Imaging the Japanese Tsunami
Raytheon’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the keystone instrument on the Earth Observing System Terra and Aqua satellites, has proved to be a major asset to the scientific community for the observation of global climate events. The sensor is used to observe and monitor fires, volcanic eruptions, dust storms, hurricanes and floods.
In the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, MODIS provided critical imagery that helped to track the scale of the devastation. MODIS’ true-color imagery showed the extent of fires across the country, while false color images, combining both visible and infrared light, showed the extent of flooding along the coastline. The imagery also showed a bright orange-red thermal signature from fires caused by the earthquake near the city of Sendai.
At the same time, Raytheon’s Shared Reconnaissance Pod sensors on the Global Hawk supported reconnaissance flights over the Japanese mainland that mapped the devastation and help to find several hundred survivors who were previously unknown to the U.S. Forces and the Japanese government.
Center for Public Safety
Raytheon is working with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to engage in a strategic relationship with the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science for the establishment of the UCLA Center for Public Safety Network Systems. The Center will be located at UCLA and managed by the UCLA Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA).
To lay the foundation for the new center, we initially committed $1 million for three years to the UCLA ITA to manage the conduct of research related to public safety networks.
The mission of the UCLA Center for Public Safety Network Systems is to bring together academia, industry and public safety agencies to provide technical leadership, to establish a collaborative forum for research, and to define standards for public safety networks. The center will operate to benefit public safety agencies and guide the public safety community in the evolution of technologies and standards.
