HOUSTON – Houston-based Wichita Tribal Enterprises, LLC will provide financial and business management services to NASA’s Johnson Space Center under a potential $45 million, five-year agreement announced Nov. 28. The contract between NASA and the Native American, tribal-owned business to support Johnson’s office of the chief financial officer becomes effective Jan. 1 and spans a three-year base period, with the possibility of two one-year extensions.
While the U.S. Navy has completed the conversion of four Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines into SSGN Trident boats, questions remain about the funding and potential use of the transformed vessels, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). For example, Congress could question whether the Navy adequately funded programs for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and other advanced payloads so as to take full advantage of the SSGNs’ large payload capacity, CRS notes
LONDON – The Dutch government does not expect U.S. Air Force delays in fielding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to directly impact its plans, but acknowledges the schedule may yet change as U.S. budget decisions are made. Defense Minister Hans Hillen tells legislators that the shift in a U.S. Air Force initial operational capability will not, at this point, interfere with Dutch plans because of the Netherlands’ F-16 replacement schedule.
LONDON – The French senate wants the government to buy General Atomics Reaper unmanned aircraft rather than Israel Aerospace Industries Heron-TPs for the country’s interim medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV requirement, as a cost-saving measure. The senate approved an amendment, 33-3, calling on the government to buy the Reaper and put industrial considerations on the back burner in the near-term — Dassault is fronting the Heron-TP purchase.
In response to an informal poll, retired senior U.S. Air Force leaders say a 20% across-the-board budget sequestration cut could lead to broad reductions in force structure, particularly of legacy fighters like the F-16 and F-15C. The leaders, attending an Air Force Association-sponsored seminar Nov. 29, also say that if the budget reductions were to produce a showdown between the Long-Range Strike program and F-35 production, the Joint Strike Fighter would without a doubt be the program to survive.
PARIS – Russian ground controllers were unable to send telecommands to the stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft Nov. 28 via a European Space Agency ground station in western Australia, according to ESA officials, and the agency is now planning changes to a second tracking facility to expand opportunities for reaching the wayward spacecraft.
AsiaSat 7, a Space Systems/Loral spacecraft built to provide C- and Ku-band service from the Middle East to Australasia for Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Ltd., is en route to its operational orbital slot after a Proton launch from Baikonur last week. Solar arrays on the SS/L 1300 bus deployed as planned, and the satellite was on its way to its final orbital position at 105 deg. E. Long., according to International Launch Services, which organized the mission.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is hoping that his amendment requiring the U.S. government to sell at least 66 F-16s to Taiwan will remain alive. The member of the Senate Armed Services Committee proposed the measure as part of the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2012 that the Senate planned to debate until early in the day on Nov. 30. “Our hope is we’ll get a vote on that before time runs out,” Cornyn says of the amendment. Cornyn says he has racked up bipartisan support for the bill, but it is not without controversy.
SARSAT: Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) and Astrium UK hope to develop a small orbiting platform for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads that will cost only 20% of today’s going rate for SAR satellites, opening the day/night/all-weather Earth-observation capability to broader use. The British government will spend £21 million as seed money to help SSTL and Astrium UK develop NovaSAR, a constellation of small radarsats the companies and government hope can leverage another £154 million in investment and a return of more than £1 billion over the next 10 years.
RETROFIT KITS: The Boeing Co. has been awarded a $17.2 million contract for the design, development, and installation of engineering change proposal 618 retrofit kits for eight Royal Malaysian Air Force F/A-18 aircraft under the Foreign Military Sales Program, the Defense Department said Nov. 28. The contract also includes training for ECP 618 and ECP 624, and the installation of other systems that are part of the Malaysian upgrade. The work will be performed in St. Louis and Malaysia, and is expected to be completed in April 2015.
SAN FRANCISCO — High-resolution images released recently of a massive star formation taken by a mid-range infrared (IR) instrument on NASA’s Sofia airborne observatory are a bold example of the power of flying a 100-in. IR telescope high above Earth’s dust- and pollution-laden atmosphere. The images are of the W40 star formation 1,700 light years from Earth, one of a handful of star-forming regions, such as Orion, that astronomers study because they are relatively close at hand — within a few thousand light years of the Sun.
As contractor and Pentagon program officials try to navigate their way to success in the current budget-freezing climate paralyzing Washington, they can find some mapping hints from Adm. Kirkland Donald, the director of U.S. Naval Reactors, which is regarded as one of the most solid and consistent divisions within the Defense Department. Essentially, Donald says, those responsible for programs must go beyond what is simply required to get the job done.
NASA’s big new Mars rover Curiosity is safely on its say to the red planet after being launched with its plutonium-fueled power source Saturday. The rover is expected to land next summer in a large equatorial crater with a rich history.
New Delhi – India’s air force will soon submit a flight evaluation report on the two aircraft vying to fulfill the service’s need for six midair refuelers. EADS, through its Military Transport Aircraft Div., is offering the Airbus Military A330 multirole tanker transport, while Russia’s Ilyushin has proposed more of its Il-78s. The IAF has been operating six Il-78s for more than five years. Defense officials say the IAF required a new tender to procure refuelers to augment the Il-78s.
The U.K. government expects to award a contract for search-and-rescue helicopter services in 2013 as it revives a procurement that was derailed this year over irregularities. After scrapping the £6 billion ($9.3 billion) private finance initiative SAR-H program in February on the eve of a formal contract signature with the Soteria consortium — which included CHC Helicopters, Thales, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Sikorsky offering the S-92 — the Transport Department on Nov. 28 revived the program with industry now assessing how to team up.
ARMY Lockheed Martin Corp., Orlando, Fla., was awarded a $45,819,571 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the logistical services in support of the AH-64 Apache Modernized and Legacy Target Acquisition Designation Sight Assembly and Pilot Night Vision Sensor Assembly System. The work will be performed in Orlando, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 31, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-12-C-0009). NAVY
Under sequestration-ordered spending caps in fiscal 2013, the U.S. Defense Department would have no choice but to make half of the budget cuts from acquisition, a defense analyst says. And if Pentagon planners aren’t preparing for the Budget Control Act’s sequestration scenario, says Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, they should be.
Houston – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s prolific asteroid hunter, the AKARI infrared space telescope, has ceased operations after a more than five year mission. The spacecraft’s transmitter was turned off Nov. 24, six months after the detection of an onboard power supply problem, JAXA reports. The polar orbiting telescope, Japan’s first in the wavelength, is responsible for more than 1.3 million contributions to an all-sky catalogue of infrared sources, among them 5,120 asteroids.
