Lighting

Built in Lockheed Martin’s former rocket assembly building, the GPS III Processing Facility (GPF) spans nearly 50,000 square feet of assembly and test areas for new GPS III satellites. The facility features an industry-leading production line that enables highly efficient manufacturing of GPS III satellites. The facility includes:

  • A 32,900-square-foot, SCIF-level, Class 100,000 cleanroom high bay that serves as the “factory floor” and houses assembly stations, a solar array test fixture, and a space vehicle transfer fixture
  • A 960-square-foot thermal vacuum chamber that simulates the conditions of space for testing purposes
  • A 2,880-square-foot, two-story anechoic test chamber that allows for testing of antennas and telemetry equipment without sound or electromagnetic interference

The GPS III program replaced aging GPS satellites while improving capability to meet the evolving needs of military, commercial, and civilian users worldwide. GPS III satellites deliver enhanced accuracy and improved anti-jamming capability, extend the spacecraft’s design life, and add a new civil signal interoperable with international global navigation satellite systems.

As the project’s electrical engineer, RMH designed normal and backup power systems, lighting, grounding, fire alarm system detection and notification, lightning protection, access control, and public address systems for this critical facility.

Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Space Systems

The Space Operations Simulation Center (SOSC) provides an ultra-stable environment for developing, evaluating, and testing precision instruments and navigation systems for space vehicles. Sophisticated facilities enable full- and sub-scale simulations of ranging, rendezvous, docking, imaging, descent, and landing operations—all of which are necessary for the success of manned and robotic missions to Earth-orbiting platforms and celestial bodies. The 41,000-square-foot building includes a 16,000-square-foot high bay with a robot wing and an airlock, four mission operations centers, two control rooms, a two-story lobby, and support spaces.

RMH’s role for this fast-track project included electrical/lighting design, lighting modeling, energy modeling, and LEED consulting. RMH met the challenge of spearheading the LEED effort for a project with an accelerated schedule and complex technical spaces not typical for a LEED-targeted facility. The facility achieved LEED-NC Gold certification.

In a related project, our engineers designed a 50-foot-tall, six-degree-of-freedom robot system used to design and test autonomous spacecraft guidance systems within the SOSC facility. The high-precision robot maneuvers and docks full-scale spacecraft mock-ups with minimal deflection under load. The design included a unique 2,000-psi hydraulic counterbalance system that supports the vertical-axis platform’s 36,000-pound mass.

Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Space Systems

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