L5 Contract Awarded to Lockheed Martin
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a $6 million contract to develop and demonstrate a payload that will temporarily transmit a third civil signal, on the L5 frequency at 1176MHz, from a Block IIR-M satellite.
Previous plans called for the L5 civil signal, aimed principally at safety requirements in civil aviation, to appear on the Block IIF satellites. Early speculation posits that the Air Force may want to conduct some signal testing before the IIFs are launched, or secure the frequency according to ITU requirements, as GIOVE-A did for Galileo.
Lockheed Martin and its navigation payload supplier ITT will provide an in-orbit demonstration of the new civil signal.
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