Fort Wayne company plays major role in tracking Sandy

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) A Fort Wayne company played a major role in tracking Hurricane Sandy.

ITT Exelis has been making weather satellite instruments for nearly 50 years. The company provides NASA and the federal government with satellites that take pictures of storms, watch for severe weather, and provide weather data like wind speed. It is also responsible for the majority of images and pictures that people see from the weather center or local news outlets.

The company makes two types of instruments. One is called an imager that takes pictures of the continental United States. The other is a sounder which creates a profile of the atmosphere that forecasters use for data collection.

The company is working on a new generation imager set to launch in 2016. Company employees said it will give forecasters data up to six times faster, and take pictures every 30 seconds from 22,000 miles in the air.

"To truly get a global coverage and to have those models that allows us to know where Sandy is going to go two to five days in advance really only come from satellites," said Eric Webster, the director of Weather Systems at ITT Exelis.

He said the satellites provide forecasters with information they couldn't get from any other source.

Webster said their technology is especially important in times like this with severe weather.

"In a way that would pound New York City, and Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C., and impact an area that's potentially dozens of millions of people and give them time to evacuate or prepare for flooding," Webster said.

The handmade instruments can cost up to $7 billion per contract, but the satellites made within 20 year contracts orbit the globe for years without being replaced.