Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) won’t be ready to fly its first mission to the International Space Station on Feb. 7 as planned, and may run into an upcoming space traffic jam in March that could delay a doubled NASA payout for the consolidated flight.
John Young, who took over as the CEO of Alenia North America in June 2010, has left the company, and a new top officer is evidently waiting in the wings. A company official says an announcement on a new CEO is forthcoming as soon as next week.
BORDER SURVEILLANCE: Thales, working with Spanish firm Aerovision, has demonstrated the Fulmar UAV system to Frontex, the European agency trying to coordinate border control. Fulmar weighs 19 kg (42 lb.), has an operating ceiling of 3,000 meters, and 8 hr. of endurance, the company says. The system was recently demonstrated during a Frontex trial at the Greek Aktio air base. Several other systems were also on hand.
PARIS — After more than two months stuck circling in low Earth orbit, Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft ceased to exist on Jan. 15, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos, though details of the unmanned probe’s atmospheric re-entry remain unknown. Russian space and intelligence forces indicated the failed Mars sample-return mission disappeared over the Pacific Ocean at 17:45 GMT on Jan. 15, Roscosmos said in a statement posted on the agency’s website the following day.
AIR FORCE Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., El Segundo, Calif., is being awarded a $376,523,860 firm-fixed-price contract for the modification of the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) Block II follow-on contract. This contract exercises the option to produce, process, launch, and activate on-orbit Satellite Vehicle 9 as previously negotiated. The location of the performance is Fort Worth. The work is expected to be completed by May 2013. SMC/PKJW, El Segundo, Calif., is the contracting activity (FA8808-10-C-001/P00020).
Feb. 14-16, 2012 Arlington, VA Shedding light on DoD’s future spending priorities and important technology areas! Hear from senior service leaders on what the customer wants and how requirements are shifting. For more information and to register visit www.aviationweek.com/events/dtar. Click here to view the pdf
After a review of the latest round of tests of the GPS interference potential of LightSquared’s proposed wireless network, the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee has determined that “both LightSquared’s original and modified [plans] would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers.”
Iran’s military ambitions mean that the U.S. is going to need more aircraft with stealth and more range, a new defense study argues, because access to nearby bases in the region can no longer be taken for granted. On Jan. 17, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) released its study, “Outside In: Operating from Range to Defeat Iran’s Ant-Access and Area-Denial Threats,” which outlines an “operational concept” to deal with the time when Iran could advance what military strategists call “Anti-access/Area denial” (A2/AD) in the Persian Gulf.
Pentagon officials are working to improve the fuze on the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the largest conventional munition in the U.S. Air Force arsenal. The MOP project began in response to an urgent need in 2003 for a capability to penetrate deeper than with any current U.S. munition; at the time, U.S. forces were early in their Iraq campaign.
In the latest annual report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the U.S. Air Force ranks last among the services in testing performance, with a mere 27% of programs reviewed meeting their reliabiliity thresholds. DOT&E chief J. Michael Gilmore writes that of the 311 Major Defense Acquisition Programs that his office scrutinized in fiscal 2011, 67 experienced either significant delays and/or Nunn-McCurdy breaches, with thirty-six actually breaching Nunn-McCurdy cost-growth caps.
AIR FORCE Lockheed Martin Corp., Space System Co., Newton, Pa., is being awarded a $238,489,236 cost-plus-incentive-fee with award fee contract for exercise option contract line item number 0016 to begin production of GPS III Space Vehicles three and four. The location of the performance is Newtown, Pa. Work is expected to be completed by Jan. 24, 2016. SMC/GPK, El Segundo, Calif., is the contracting activity (FA8807-08-C-0010).
While the Pentagon has made some progress in developing a procurement and operational plan for dealing with changes in the Arctic climate, more needs to be done, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says.
To retain and maintain its strength in the Pacific as China grows as a naval force, the U.S. needs to augment its naval fleet size, a noted think tank asserts. The current stated objective U.S. Navy fleet size is 313 and current budget cuts threaten to slice that number. The U.S. will need more ships, the Center for a New American Security says in its January report.
LEWIS DEPARTS: After 33 years in Congress, Rep. Jerry Lewis, the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has announced he will not run for re-election. The Republican from Southern California is legendary in defense circles and in a sense represents a style of lawmaking that is being squeezed by an emphasis on government-wide belt-tightening. Lewis led the defense subcommittee dealing with Pentagon spending from 1999 to 2005, which included the early years of the Bush boom in military spending.
HOUSTON — The International Space Station maneuvered Jan. 13 to avoid an impact threat posed by a 5-in. fragment from a 2009 orbital collision involving U.S. and Russian satellites. The 54-sec. debris avoidance maneuver (DAM) was carried out at 11:10 a.m. EST, using thrusters on the station’s Russian Zvezda service module.
In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not produce an issue dated Tuesday, Jan. 17. The next issue after that will be dated Wednesday, Jan. 18. Aviation Week Intelligence Network subscribers may visit www.aviationweek.com/awin at any time for news updates.
The U.S. Army and Air Force are in the final throes of hashing out a memorandum of agreement on the light cargo lift mission, the latest chapter in a years-long saga over this mission despite two wars and one fizzled buy of the C-27J. The agreement is being made by the chiefs of staff of both services. At issue is which service will manage the light cargo support mission; this includes the shuttling of small loads of supplies to forward Army units in the field.
PARIS — The Russian space agency Roscosmos says its moribund Phobos-Grunt spacecraft could reenter Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Atlantic Ocean Jan. 15, raining down 20-30 chunks of heat-resistant debris off the coast of Argentina. But the agency’s forecast differs wildly from those published online by satellite-tracking enthusiasts and professional orbital analysts in the U.S. using the same publicly available data to predict points of entry that are literally all over the map.
