Lockheed Martin has added Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and IBM Business Consulting Services to its team competing to build a U.S. government environmental satellite, Lockheed Martin announced April 17.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) series is intended to provide faster ground processing for new and advanced products that will provide economic benefits for the United States in the areas of weather and water, climate, ecosystems monitoring and management and commerce and transportation.

SAIC’s Earth Sciences Operation will provide scientific programming and technology expertise to the development of algorithms, as well as characterization and modeling of the suite of sensors. IBM Business Consulting Services will support the migration of the current GOES infrastructure into a service-oriented, open architecture design to enhance the flexibility and responsiveness to users needs.

GOES-R, managed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also will be the cornerstone of the Global Earth Observations System of Systems, a partnership of more than 60 countries developing a network that will link of existing and planned Earth-observation systems. The first GOES-R launch is scheduled for 2012