PRIME TIME: NBC plans to broadcast a reality TV competition called “Space Race” that will offer a flight to the edge of space on the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo to its winner. The U.S. network signed a deal with Virgin Galactic and One Three Media, which produced Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice and other “unscripted series.” The production team will have “unprecedented access” to Virgin’s operations at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and will begin distribution activities at an upcoming marketing conference in Cannes, France.
Teams are forming bids for a long-anticipated program to provide the Australian Defense Force with a new fixed-wing pilot training system. Lockheed Martin has teamed with Pilatus Aircraft, supported by Hawker Pacific, to offer the PC-21 turboprop trainer for Project AIR 5428. BAE Systems has already teamed with Beechcraft to offer the T-6C turboprop.
NEW DELHI — India’s defense research agency is preparing to test, for the first time, a high-altitude interceptor missile in November, a senior scientist says. The exo-atmospheric test is “part of the developmental trials” for the first phase of India’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) system, an official at the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) says. “Critical simulation tests” are under way to prepare for the flight. “The major trial will be held in the last week of November,” the DRDO official says.
Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet. A scoop of geologic fines — dust and finely grained soil — collected for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite inside the rover body detected water molecules that someday may be recovered by astronauts practicing in situ resource utilization (ISRU).
TEL AVIV — The U.S.-Russian initiative to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons will be an enormous challenge, and the prospects for accomplishing it are doubtful, experts contend. Each step of the process, from finding all of the weapons to transporting them and then eventual disposal, will be fraught with risk.
As the U.S. government resigns itself to the prospect of long-term sequestration budget cuts, the Defense Department could consider lifting its ban on prime U.S. contractors acquiring each other, according to Exelis CEO David Melcher. “I don’t see the department … standing in the way of consolidation,” Melcher said Oct. 2 at an Atlantic Council lecture on the defense business in an age of austerity.
At NASA, which celebrated its 55th anniversary by furloughing 97% of its workforce, concern is centered on two programs trying to stay on schedule for their launch windows.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Aviation unit failed to obtain best value when it purchased sole-source spare parts from Boeing, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) says in a recently released report.
The U.S. Navy successfully completed nine guided flight tests for the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (Lrlap) 155mm rocket-assisted guided projectile system, Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) announced late last month. All nine tests were accurately guided to their targets about 45 nm from the launch site, Navsea says. Lrlap functionality was proven through gun launch, rocket motor ignition, guidance acquisition, navigation to target and warhead detonation.
STILL SPENDING: A U.S. government shutdown and debt ceiling fight on Capitol Hill notwithstanding, nominal federal spending plans for fiscal 2014 and beyond entail $117 billion in defense information technology (IT) contracting opportunities, according to federal IT consulting company Deltek. Another $38 billion will come from civilian agencies like NASA, FAA and others. Furthermore, despite a common industry complaint that budget caps in recent years have essentially derailed new-start programs, that is not the case. Deltek said in a webinar to clients Oct.
BEIJING — With the success of its high-resolution Pleiades optical imaging satellites, French space agency CNES is preparing a demonstration of a potential follow-on system that would launch in the early 2020s, most likely on a European Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. The OTOS technology demo, formerly known as CXCI, is the precursor to a dual system designed to capture up to 750 images per day per satellite at 20- to 30-cm ground resolution and a swath width of 15-20 km in panchromatic mode.
Karem Aircraft is to design a tiltrotor to meet U.S. Army future utility-rotorcraft requirements under one of four contracts awarded for Phase 1 of the Joint Multi Role technology demonstration (JMR TD). JMR is a precursor to the Army’s planned Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Medium program to replace first the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter and later the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, beginning in the mid-2030s.
PARIS — Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) says a new version of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle aborted a planned restart of its upper stage engine during an otherwise successful Sept. 29 debut of the upgraded rocket.
HOUSTON—The shutdown of the U.S. government that began Oct. 1 may have stalled NASA’s Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop, but not the determination of two dozen of the 140 participants to collaborate independently on how to address the near-Earth object collision threat. The three-day, NASA-sponsored, invitation-only workshop was shuttered after the Sept. 30 half-day opening session. The agency expects to reconvene the final two days of the dual-track program via webcast, though the details are yet to be formulated
As the U.S. kicked off a set of regional joint maritime exercises this month with the South Korean navy, U.S. military officials there warned of the need to develop and hone ballistic missile defense, asymmetric tactics and other military capabilities in the wake of continuing escalation by North Korea.
The current acquisition strategy for the U.S. Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) program is too risky, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). In fiscal year 2014, the Navy plans to commit to investing an estimated $3.7 billion to develop, build, and field from six to 24 aircraft as an initial increment for Uclass, one of its most important aviation programs.
NEW DELHI — India on Oct. 2 moved its Mars Orbiter to the launch pad at Sriharikota range for its scheduled launch to the red planet on Oct. 28. After a series of tests, scientists at the India Space Research Organization (ISRO) gave the green light to transport the 1,340-kg orbiter to the launch pad for integration with the 350-ton rocket, which is an extended version of the space agency’s workhorse launcher, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL), an ISRO scientist says.
NEW DELHI — India has agreed to remove all hurdles to expanded weapons sales from the U.S., with plans to expedite licensing and approvals for what has become a nearly $9 billion defense trade between the two countries.
Current spending plans for the U.S. Army’s Stryker vehicle have increased five times from what the Pentagon had estimated just a year ago. The 2014 budget request for the Stryker family of vehicles is $374 million, nearly three times what the 2013 plan estimated. Total estimated spending for the outyears (2015-2017) is now $1 billion, five times what planners estimated in 2013 for the same period. (See charts pp. 6-9.)
