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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STAYING RELEVANT: Making sure a Pentagon, NASA or FAA program keeps on its budget and delivery schedule is just one thing managers will have to do to stay alive as U.S. budgets start to account for the 2011 Budget Control Act’s long-term spending reductions, according to participants at Aviation Week’s recent Aerospace and Defense Programs conference. According to several panel discussions, executives and analysts believe making sure a given program is relevant — but not redundant — to the customer agency’s de-scoped mission also will be increasingly important.
LONDON — Eurocopter’s Brazilian subsidiary Helibras has flown its first locally assembled EC725 Caracal. The helicopter, BRA17, believed to be destined for the Brazilian navy, took to the air at the company’s facility in Itajuba, Minas Gerais, on Nov. 21 and represents the beginning of the third stage of the H-XBR program, which will see 50 EC725s enter service with the Brazilian air force, navy and army, as the country modernizes its helicopter forces.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Nov. 26 - 28 — Autonomous, Unmanned Systems & Robotics Conference, Exhibition and Demonstration, Rishon Lezion, Israel. For more information go to ausrexpo.com
HOUSTON — The capture phase of NASA’s proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) sparked great interest during a Nov. 21 workshop in Houston, with outside experts saying they want to shape a grand strategy to find and corral a 5- to 10-meter, 500-metric-ton near-Earth object for a journey to a stable orbit around the Moon, where it could be accessed by future U.S. astronauts.
Frozen igniter fluid lines were to blame for the failure of an upper-stage restart during the first Falcon 9 v1.1 launch on Sept. 29. Officials at Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), manufacturer of the rocket, did not detect the problem during ground tests because “ambient air kept the lines warm,” says Emily Shanklin, a spokeswoman for the company. It is unclear whether thermal testing was conducted. “We’ve added insulation and made sure that cold oxygen can’t impinge on the lines” in future missions, she says.
DUBAI — The consortium of European aerospace manufacturers building the Eurofighter Typhoon has started trials to integrate MBDA’s Storm Shadow cruise missile onto the combat aircraft. Flight trials with the weapon are due to begin soon using Alenia Aermacchi’s flight-test aircraft IPA2. Ground tests to ensure the 1,230-kg weapon fits onto the second inner-most under wing pylon have already been carried out, according to Eurofighter officials, speaking at the Dubai air show on Nov. 20.
A new White House space-transportation policy stresses public-private partnerships and “responsive” military space capabilities, and allows the commercial launch of foreign rockets from U.S. soil on a “case-by-case” basis. “The U.S. space transportation sector is undergoing a period of change as new actors and capabilities emerge and nontraditional public-private partnerships are established,” the eight-page document notes. “At the same time, the sector faces challenges, to include increased proliferation concerns and international competition.”
DARMSTADT, Germany — The European Space Agency (ESA) orbited its Swarm Earth-observation mission atop a Russian Rockot launcher Nov. 22, sending a trio of research satellites 500 km (300 mi.) above the planet’s surface to study the magnetic field that protects it from cosmic radiation and charged particles in the solar wind.
DUBAI — A U.S. Navy notice for the purchase of 36 Super Hornets posted on a federal procurement website in October was nothing more than an error, according to the Navy’s Hornet program manager. Speaking at the Dubai air show on Nov. 19, Capt. Frank Morley, Naval Air Systems Command program manager for the Boeing-built F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18 Growler, said that the notice, which went up on the FedBizOps.gov website on Oct. 17, was an “administrative error” and had no effect on the current program of record.
AEGIS AWARD: The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon a $406 million multi-year contract to provide AN/SPY-1 radar transmitters and MK99 Fire Control Systems for Lockheed Martin’s Aegis combat system. The components of the weapon system perform the search, track and missile guidance functions for Aegis, which the U.S. Navy is upgrading to provide greater ballistic missile defense as well as enhanced ship-defense.
TEL AVIV — The Israeli Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) held a successful test of the David’s Sling air defense system on Nov. 20 in which a ballistic missile was intercepted and destroyed. Barring unexpected delays, the system, also known as Magic Wand, is expected to be operational within two years. It has been in development since 2006
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (Darpa) goal with its new Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program is to demonstrate a reusable capability that can transition to industry for low-cost military and commercial satellite launches and hypersonic technology testing. The agency usually hands off successful programs to one of the U.S. military services, but “Darpa’s XS-1 transition partner is you — industry,” Program Manager Jess Sponable told attendees at a proposers’ day briefing earlier this month. (See charts p. 8.)
