EXPORT REFORM: The historic move to transfer key, export-controlled aerospace categories for aircraft and gas turbine engines from the U.S. Munitions List to the Commerce Control List has “created many new problems and challenges for exporters and their counsel,” according to partners in the law firm Barnes and Thornburg. They say that since the reforms took effect Oct.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has postponed the Falcon 9 v1.1’s first mission to geostationary transfer orbit until Nov. 28, as mission managers sort out a liquid-oxygen pressurization issue on the rocket’s first stage. The planned Nov. 25 mission was to carry the Orbital Sciences Corp.-built SES-8 satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 295 km x 80,000 km altitude and an inclination of 20.75 deg. for Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest commercial fleet operator by revenue.
The U.S. ranks as the leading supplier of defense aircraft for Asia-Pacific partners and allies, according to an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of data provided by Avascent Analytics. The U.S. will have sold about $79.2 billion worth of defense aircraft and related equipment, including both development and production costs, between fiscal 2009-2023 to Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the analysis shows.
LONDON — The U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) has begun training on the first of its upgraded Eurocopter Puma Mk. 2s, extending the helicopter’s life out to 2025. So far, seven of the RAF’s fleet of 24 Puma Mk. 2s have been delivered to RAF Benson, Oxfordshire, as part of the £260 million ($420 million) Puma Life Extension Program (LEP) launched in September 2009. The rest of the helicopters are due to be handed over in the next two years, with the fleet expected to be fully operationally capable in 2015.
HOUSTON — NASA’s recently concluded Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis workshop is providing the agency’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) planners with new momentum for the agency’s two-phase strategy to resume U.S. human deep-space exploration while demonstrating capabilities to find and deflect asteroids that pose an impact threat.
LONDON — The Peruvian defense ministry has ordered a pair of Alenia C-27J Spartan tactical airlifters as the country’s air force modernizes its air transport fleet. The deal, announced on Nov. 25, is valued at €100 million ($135 million) and includes what the company describes as a “substantial logistic support package” for the two aircraft.
Tensions are starting to build in the Asia-Pacific with China’s recent establishment of an “Air Defense Identification Zone” in the East China Sea. The zone, established Nov. 23, blankets most of the East China Sea, including a group of uninhabited islets whose ownership is disputed by China and Japan. The Chinese Defense Ministry says it will take “defensive emergency measures” against unidentified aircraft that fly into the area.
The U.S. Navy has capped off the initial engineering and manufacturing development test phase for the Raytheon-designed Joint Precision and Approach Landing System (JPALS) with another set of at-sea trials in which two F/A-18C Hornets from naval test squadron VX-23 executed more than 70 JPALS approaches and automated landings aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) over a two-week period.
NEW DELHI — India’s Mars probe, currently orbiting Earth before it embarks on a nine-month journey to the red planet, has activated its Mars Color Camera (MCC) and sent back its first images. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has shared a single image of India and the surrounding region taken on Nov. 19 at 13:50 (IST) at a resolution of 3.53 km from an altitude of 67,975 km. The photo clearly shows India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Himalayas and the Indo-Gangetic plain.
Boeing, Rockwell Collins and Sierra Nevada have been selected to design systems enabling U.S. Army special operations helicopter pilots to land safely in poor visibility caused by rotor-blown dust, sand, rain and snow. The three companies have received contracts for Phase 1 of the Degraded Visual Environment Pilotage System (DVEPS) program. In the seven-month first phase, they will demonstrate their chosen anti-brownout sensors on the ground.
ARMY POND – FSB (joint venture), Norcross, Ga., was awarded a $13,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery contract for architect, engineer services to support the Air Force KC-46A aircraft within the continental U.S. Estimated completion date is Nov. 19, 2018. Bids were solicited via the Internet with 57 received. Funding and location will be determined with each order. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile, Ala., is the contracting agency (W91278-14-D-0001).
HIGH THROUGHPUT: Euroconsult says 33 High Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems will be launched between 2014 and 2016, compared to the total 31 HTS systems that were launched over the last decade. “The growing popularity of HTS systems will bring the total cumulative investment to over $12 billion,” the consultancy says. Euroconsult predicts global HTS capacity supply will nearly triple over the next three years to reach 1,400 Gbps in 2016.
HOUSTON — Russia’s unpiloted Progress 53 cargo capsule will test upgraded rendezvous system hardware over a four-day journey to the International Space Station that began Nov. 25 with a liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The automated linkup with the station’s Russia segment Zvezda service module is expected on Nov. 29 at 5:28 p.m. EST.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) founder Elon Musk says he expects the company’s new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to force greater competition and innovation in the launch industry as it captures market share. Musk’s comments came the day before the Falcon 9 v1.1 was due to launch its first commercial payload to supersynchronous transfer orbit on Nov. 25 from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla.
The Pentagon is eyeing the Arctic and promising to “preserve freedom of the seas throughout the region, to ensure that the Arctic Ocean will be as peacefully navigated as other oceans of the world,” according to the U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The U.S. Army is keeping it simple in setting targets for its Joint Multi Role (JMR) advanced rotorcraft technology demonstration. Four teams have been awarded preliminary design contracts under JMR Phase 1, and the Army plans to select two contractors next year to fly competing air-vehicle demonstrators in 2017. A follow-on Phase 2 effort will demonstrate mission-equipment technology.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and its industrial partners need more time to reduce the weight of the service module they are developing to fly on NASA’s Orion multipurpose crew exploration vehicle in 2017, a delay that will see the project’s preliminary design review (PDR) slip nearly one year, to May 2014.
BEIJING — South Korea will buy 40 Lockheed Martin F-35As to satisfy a fighter requirement initially set at 60 aircraft, its joint chiefs of staff announced on Nov. 22. A further 20 fighters, not necessarily F-35s, may be ordered later, subject to security and fiscal circumstances. The decision almost certainly puts an end to Boeing’s hopes of selling more F-15s to South Korea. The other competitor, the Eurofighter consortium, led by EADS in South Korea, seems to have a remote chance of filling the later order.
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