Washington, D.C. ? A team led by defense company ITT Corp. on Thursday won a government contract worth up to $1.8 billion to build the first portion of a new satellite-based air traffic control system.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which awarded the contract, said upgrading the system used to manage commercial and general aviation traffic will help reduce congestion on runways and in the skies, and reduce operating costs.

The full upgrade of the air traffic control system is expected to cost more than $15 billion and take nearly 20 years to build.

The current system uses 50-year-old analog radar technology to handle roughly 85,000 flights per day, a number predicted to reach more than 111,000 daily flights by 2020. A satellite-based system could handle about three times current air traffic levels.