NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) crashed into the far side of the Moon early April 18, in a planned impact set up after the orbiter spent 140 days collecting data on the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere before dipping to an altitude of less than 1 mi. for close-up measurements. Earlier this month, controllers at Ames Research Center commanded the probe to the lower altitude, where natural orbital decay took it on down to the surface. The spacecraft hit the surface at a speed of 3,600 mph.
A “problem” found recently in orbit with Hispasat’s Amazonas 4A communications satellite has cost manufacturer Orbital Sciences Corp. tens of millions of dollars in first-quarter 2014 charges, executives said April 17.
The U.S. Defense Department is still banking on so-called class justifications for sole-source contracts, especially for weapon systems, a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel dismissed assertions this week by Russian President Vladimir Putin that building ballistic missile defense (BMD) sites such as Aegis Ashore in Poland, Romania and any other countries in the region will start a new arms race.
Development of the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (Lrlap), Advanced Gun System (AGS) and SPY-3 radar system for the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer is on track, U.S. Navy officials say. Calling Lrlap and the AGS “the crown jewel” of the Zumwalt during a briefing at the recent Navy League annual Sea-Air-Space conference, Navy officials touted the systems’ test performance thus far.
Raytheon is on track to develop an improved Sea Griffin missile with an extended range, new dual-mode seeker and expanded communications, says Steve Dickman, the company’s Griffin program director. Seeking to capitalize on its success in mating Griffins with U.S. Navy Patrol Coastal (PC) ships, Raytheon is developing improved missiles for the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program as well as for international naval forces, Dickman tells the Aviation Week Intelligence Network.
Showing pilots current and future sonic boom impact areas and intensities so they can adjust trajectories is expected to play a key role in securing regulatory approval for low-boom supersonic flight over land, and NASA is seeking proposals to flight test a suitable cockpit display. The contract is one of several to be awarded as NASA continues to prepare for a hoped-for flight demonstrator that would allow the agency to collect the data on community response to low booms that is needed to persuade the FAA to lift its ban on civil supersonic flight over land.
The U.S. Air Force is looking to its prime contractors to help the armed service press their subcontractors and supply chains under Pentagon-wide cost-cutting efforts known as Better Buying Power—to the point of rewriting long-running deals, according to one official.
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SINGAPORE — Airbus Defense and Space has signed a deal with Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for a trial of its Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based mobile closed circuit television (CCTV) monitoring system. The trial, part of Singapore’s “Safe City Test Bed” (SCTB) implementation, will use a vehicle-mounted CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) monitor that can be moved rapidly to “specific areas and persons of interest associated to crime,” the company says.
LONDON — The first Airbus A400M for the Turkish air force has arrived in country following protracted handover negotiations that delayed its delivery since late 2013. The aircraft, MSN09, was delivered to Kayseri air base on April 16 from Airbus’s A400M final assembly line in Seville, Spain, according to the country’s undersecretariat for defense industries (known as SSM), and is the first of two planned for delivery to Turkey this year. Airbus Defense and Space formally handed MSN09 over to Turkey on April 4.
The U.S. Navy is postponing the commissioning of the Virginia-class attack submarine SSN-784 North Dakota to an undetermined future date, the service said April 16. The decision “is based on the need for additional design and certification work required on the submarine’s redesigned bow and material issues with vendor-assembled and delivered components,” the service said.
NASA plans to work with Canada and Germany on joint flight tests to study the atmospheric effects of emissions from aircraft burning alternative fuels. The research is a follow-on to flights conducted in 2013 to measure emissions from biofuel blends. The latest series of flights is set to begin May 7 under NASA’s Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Emissions (Access-II) program. The agency’s McDonnell Douglas DC-8 will burn different mixes of fuels while other aircraft make inflight measurements.
The U.S. Navy needs to be particularly protective of its communications networks in the current cyber climate, says Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox. “This isn’t unique to the Navy, but it’s particularly relevant to operating at sea,” Fox said during a speech earlier this month at the Navy War College in Newport, R.I.
TAMPA, Fla. — Light detection and ranging (lidar), one of the latest sensor technologies to get a boost thanks to the Afghanistan war, could make its way to space. Lidar could follow in the footsteps of wide-area motion imagery, full-motion video and hyperspectral technologies that have also garnered interest and funding due to their ability to be tested and prove their value in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While early program decisions to combine a host of technology improvements in one ship still haunt the next-generation aircraft carrier CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy appears to be making strides with the program, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
The U.S. Defense Department is highlighting “damaging cuts to military forces, modernization, and readiness that will be required if defense budgets are held at sequester-levels in the years beyond fiscal 2015.” A new report from the department about the effects of sequester-level budgets over the fiscal 2015 future years defense plan (or FYDP, covering fiscal 2015-2019) says the automatic budget cuts would result in continued force-level reductions across the military services. (See charts pp. 7-9.)
