Turns out Americans aren't the only people who want to know what the weather's going to be like tomorrow. On Monday, aerospace and defense firm Exelis (NYSE: XLS) announced that it has won a "multimillion dollar" contract to build an advanced geostationary weather imaging satellite for South Korea.
The Advanced Meteorological Imager, built as part of South Korea's GEO-KOMPSAT-2A program, is said to be a "Korean version of the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) Exelis is currently building for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA," and an analog to our GOES-R series of satellites. Exelis is currently in the process of building seven of these ABI-class satellites -- four for the U.S., two for Japan, and now one for South Korea.
These satellites hold position 22,300 miles above earth, tethered to their locations so that they're able to constantly monitor specific regions of the Earth's surface, rather than orbiting around the globe. South Korea wants its satellite, in large part, to improve its ability to keep track of locally forming typhoons and similar severe weather patterns.
Exelis shares rose 0.4% in Monday trading, closing at $11.16.
