To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) AUG. 6 - 9 — AUVSI - Unmanned Systems North America 2012 Conference and Exhibition, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nev. For more information go to www.auvsishow.org/auvsi12/public/enter.aspx.
PUSHED OUT: The NROL-36 mission to launch a classified satellite from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., for the National Reconnaissance Office has been pushed back to no earlier than Aug. 14. Col. Nina Armagno, commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 30th Space Wing, says additional time is needed to address a range instrumentation issue that prompted a launch scrub on Aug. 2. Originally, the Air Force expected to be ready to launch as early as Aug. 4. There are no problems with either the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket or the NROL-36 payload.
JSF HONCHO: The Joint Strike Fighter program will get a new leader. U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan has been nominated for a third star and will be assigned as director of the Joint Strike Fighter program office, replacing Vice Adm. David Venlet, who has headed the program since 2010. Bogdan, previously in charge of the KC-46A project, stepped into the deputy leader position on JSF in July. He replaced Maj. Gen. John Thompson, who had been with JSF for less than a year, in an unusual job swap announced in May, with Thompson taking over the tanker effort.
HOUSTON — A NASA-funded biomedical institute is helping small Maryland and Florida companies develop better methods of wound healing and rehydration for astronauts. The non-profit National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) is making the $100,000 matching awards to assist the companies in moving specialized health care products between the Earth and space under its Space Medicine and Related Technologies Commercialization Assistance Program, or Smartcap, competition.
NEW DELHI — India hopes to develop the next version of its joint hypersonic cruise missile project with Russia, the BrahMos II, in the next five years. “Having developed the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile at Mach 2.8, it is logical that we proceed to hypersonic missile with speed of more than Mach 5,” says A. Sivathanu Pillai, missile scientist and chief executive officer at BrahMos Aerospace. “With storable fuel, it is possible to achieve up to Mach 8,” he tells Aviation Week.
The U.S. Navy has established a new program office to manage the planning and procurement of the proposed next-generation aircraft carrier CVN-79 John F. Kennedy, a Gerald R. Ford-class ship. The new program office will also handle the planning and procurement for other future carriers of the Ford-class. Those ships will “move into modified repeat production of CVN-79 and -80 through the new program office,” the Navy says.
NAS PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — Testing of the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton will relocate to the U.S. Navy’s NAS Patuxent River, Md., test center after the unmanned aircraft completes envelope-expansion flights from Palmdale, Calif. The first Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) derivative of the RQ-4B Global Hawk is being prepared for flight at Palmdale and is planned to relocate to Pax River early next year, after “eight or nine flights,” says Capt. James Hoke, program manager for persistent maritime unmanned aircraft systems.
Students will be given the opportunity to send up small payloads, as well as fly up themselves, when suborbital commercial space flight becomes available as early as late 2013, according to some of the leading companies in the field. At an Aug. 1 hearing of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and XCOR Aerospace all said they are counting researchers and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students among the projected clients for their vehicles.
A classified National Reconnaissance Office mission due for launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., just after midnight Aug. 2 has been scrubbed until at least Aug. 4 because of a downrange calibration issue. NROL-36 is to be lifted into orbit by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V flying in its simplest configuration, with a 4-meter payload fairing, a single-motor Centaur upper stage and no boosters. That suggests a relatively small payload. Launch officials said there are no issues with either the rocket or the payload.
HOUSTON — A sprint to the International Space Station (ISS) may not suit everyone. On Aug. 1, Russia’s Progress 48 resupply mission lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:35 p.m. EDT on an ISS first: a four-orbit, 6-hr. trajectory that was to end with an automated docking of the unpiloted capsule at 9:24 p.m. EDT.
ATLANTA — With NASA wrapping up a decision on its next round of seed-money grants to help private companies develop vehicles to take its astronauts to the International Space Station, several of the bidders provided progress reports at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference here this week. NASA plans to announce its selections for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) Space Act Agreements at 9 a.m. EDT Aug. 3.
GENOA — Finmeccanica’s first-half results confirm that the company is recovering financially, but its growing debt is becoming an issue for management. Giuseppe Orsi, chairman and CEO, says Finmeccanica will dispose of assets worth €1 billion ($1.2 billion) before the close of the year, which should allow the company to reduce its debt. At the end of June that debt stood at €4.6 billion, an 11% increase over the same period of 2011. And the Italian economic crisis casts further doubt on the company’s debt situation.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — The U.S. Navy plans to award Northrop Grumman a contract in August to integrate the Telephonics RDR-1700 maritime surveillance radar onto the MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter to meet an urgent operational requirement.
The Obama administration more clearly told federal contractors on Aug. 1 not to issue their employees notices of potential job losses that would take place if steep across-the-board budget cuts are instituted early next year.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — The U.S. Marine Corps wants to extend the deployment of two Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-Max unmanned cargo helicopters in Afghanistan through the second quarter of 2013, based on the success of operations so far. Already extended twice, the military utility assessment begun in December 2011 currently is scheduled to continue through September of this year. “The Marine Corps has indicated a requirement to extend the capability,” says Eric Pratson, cargo UAS team lead at Naval Air Systems Command (Navair).
With a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report questioning U.S. Navy shipbuilding cost and operational assumptions, the service is defending its plan and estimates. The Navy projects that buying the new ships in the 2013 plan will cost a total of $505 billion over 30 years, or an average of $16.8 billion per year, CBO notes. CBO estimates that the cost for new-ship construction under the 2013 plan will total $599 billion through 2042, or an average of $20 billion per year
