The comet Siding Spring 2013 whizzed past Mars on Oct. 19, leaving the constellation of scientific spacecraft orbiting the planet undamaged and beginning to transmit the scientific take from their unprecedented close encounter with an Oort Cloud object.
AIRBUS DEFENCE AND SPACE made first flight of first A400M for GERMAN AIR FORCE, which has ordered 53. BOEING delivered the 18th P-8A Poseidon to the U.S. NAVY, which has ordered 53. DASSAULT AVIATION reported net sales of €715m in 3Q14 vs €762m in 3Q13; backlog increased to €8.3b from €7.5b a year ago. It has delivered seven Rafale fighter jets in January-September vs. seven a year ago, and plans to deliver four more in 4Q14.
LOS ANGELES—The U.S. Air Force X-37B spaceplane landed at Vandenberg AFB, California, on Oct. 17, completing a record-setting 675 days in orbit. The end of the third Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-3) mission comes as the Air Force prepares its second X-37B for a return to space. The Air Force operates two of the Boeing-built vehicles and last flew the second on a mission that concluded at Vandenberg in June 2012 after 469 days in space.
U.S. Army/Marine Corps Ground Vehicle Budget Excerpt, FY 15 ($ in thousands. See pp. 6-7 for full chart.) M1 Abrams MBT mods 237,023 Tank and Medium Caliber Ammo
HOUSTON – A team from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia has secured spacecraft tracking facilities in Bermuda that are vital to U.S. International Space Station resupply launches ahead of Hurricane Gonzalo, which was forecast to reach the Bermuda island group by late Oct. 17 as a Category 4 tropical storm packing 130 mph winds.
The U.S. Navy’s second MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system successfully completed its first flight earlier this month, says Northrop Grumman, which is building the system. A Navy and Northrop flight test team conducted the 6.7-hr. flight on Oct. 1 out of a manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California. The team is now prepping the aircraft to fly to a Navy facility in Maryland later this month.
NEW DELHI—India has changed the track of its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) to avoid any possible collision with debris from a fast-approaching comet that will whiz past the red planet on Oct. 19, a senior space scientist says. “The spacecraft has been taken to a position farthest from the tail of the comet Siding Spring so that it doesn’t affect the satellite as it comes close to Mars,” says A.S. Kiran Kumar, director of the Space Application Center, a research unit of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
The Joint Counter Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (Jcrew) program recently received Milestone C approval, U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) confirmed earlier this month. The Navy is developing the Jcrew system to protect soldiers on patrol, in vehicles, or in forward operating bases from radio-controlled improvised explosive devices (IED).
NEW DELHI—India successfully test-launched Nirbhay—its first indigenously developed, long-range, subsonic cruise missile—more than a year after it failed to hit its target during its first launch. The 1,000-kilometer (620-mi.)-class missile, developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), took off from the launch complex at Chandipur in the eastern Odisha state at 10:04 a.m. on Oct. 17, a DRDO official says.
The U.S. Navy’s ballistic missile defense (BMD)-capable guided-missile destroyers DDG 65 USS Benfold and DDG 69 USS Milius will be deployed to Yokosuka, Japan, the service acknowledged earlier this month.
Working in partnership, NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne have conducted 19 hot-fire tests of a rocket engine thrust chamber assembly built using copper alloy additive manufacturing, according to the company. Under a Space Act Agreement, propulsion engineers from Aerojet Rocketdyne, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and Glenn Research Center ran the test series on various mixture ratios and injector conditions with the company’s proprietary Selective Laser Melting copper alloy enhanced heat transfer design thrust chamber, Aerojet Rocketdyne said Oct. 17.
LONDON – Airbus Helicopters says it is rapidly rolling out its redesigned bevel gear vertical shaft for the EC225, seven months after its was certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Some 50 EC225s and EC725s are now flying with the new component following its certification on April 22, accumulating around 5,000 flying hours.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] . (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Oct. 20 — National Guard Association of the United States, Honolulu, Hawaii. For more information go to www.ngaus.org
With the U.S. Army retiring many of its helicopters to save money, the service is planning improvements for its frontline Apache attack helicopter. The addition of Link 16 and, eventually, new over-water radar modes are designed to better connect the AH-64 to the rest of the fleet – including aircraft used by the other military services – and potentially expand its mission.
