HOUSTON – NASA’s mission management team is aiming for May 8, at the earliest, for the next bid to launch the space shuttle Endeavour on its 25th and final flight, as technicians began on May 2 to remove the aft compartment avionics box suspected of prompting the scrub for the first attempt to equip the International Space Station with the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
The death of Osama bin Laden may prompt calls to quicken the pace of withdrawal from Afghanistan and to magnify the push to cut defense dollars, but those are not coming from the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told reporters May 2 that the Al Qaeda leader’s death had changed little on either front. “My position is we need to find savings in the defense budget,” Levin said during a conference call. “The need was there before. The need is still there after.”
AIR FORCE Raytheon Co., McKinney, Texas, is being awarded a $22,654,214 firm-fixed-price contract for logistical support of the Multispectral Targeting Systems for the Predator/Reaper program. At this time, $22,654,214 has been obligated. The work will be performed in McKinney. ASC/WIIK, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8620-06-G-4041, DO 0019).
A day after U.S. companies were shut out from the competition to secure the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) program for the Indian air force, the Obama administration is promoting the sale of Boeing’s C-17 transport to New Delhi. The air force had shortlisted the C-17 to be its new heavy-lift transport aircraft two years ago That deal is worth about $4 billion.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) may 4 - 6 — SpeedNews 9th Annual Military Aviation Suppliers Conference, The Jonathan Club, Los Angeles, Calif. For more information go to www.speednews.com MAY 8 - 12—Aerospace Medical Association’s 82nd Annual Scientific Meeting, Hilton Anchorage (Alaska) and Capt. Cook Hotels. For more information call 703-739-2240 or go to www.asma.org
Raytheon recently delivered critical mission systems early for the U.S. Navy’s DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer. The company delivered the first Total Ship Computing Environment (TSCE) data center two months ahead of schedule and the AN/SQS-60 mid-frequency sonar array eight months ahead of schedule, the company reports.
AEROSPACE AWARDS: NASA has awarded five sole-source contracts to Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., for independent assessments of selected NASA programs. The contracts last through November 2018 and have a total maximum value of $658.25 million.
A Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) trainer jet crashed April 28 in southern India during a routine sortie barely a week after an advanced light helicopter, also developed by the state-owned company, went down near the Indo-China border. “The intermediate jet trainer [IJT], prototype aircraft S-3466, was carrying out routine flight testing when it met with a mishap in the afternoon. Both of the test pilots onboard ejected safely,” HAL says in a statement. The company has begun an accident investigation.
REMEDIAL ACTION: An Australian defense ministry review of the MRH-90 has recommended that the multirole helicopter not be added to the “Project of Concern” watch list, but it wants contractor Australian Aerospace to “implement a remediation plan to improve the availability of the helicopters by addressing engineering and reliability issues.” The review was ordered in February by Defense Minister Stephen Smith and Defense Materiel Minister Jason Clare after the program suffered delays of 12 months for the navy’s helicopters and 18 months for the army’s aircraft.
Unmanned aircraft are useful for countries that can afford them, but many of the world’s air forces, governments and agencies cannot sustain long-term spending on training, personnel or force structure that UAVs require. A cheaper option is light, Predator-sized, manned aircraft equipped with sensors and weapons designed for the UAV market.
NEW DELHI — The Indian army’s artillery buy remains snarled in a maze as British defense and security company BAE Systems has opted not to bid on a program for 1,580 towed guns.
LOS ANGELES —Bolstered by its recent second-round NASA Commercial Crew Development Program (CCDev2) win to continue development of the Dream Chaser spaceship, Sierra Nevada Corp. is revealing new details of its plan to conduct full-scale drop tests in 2012 using the Scaled Composites-developed WhiteKnightTwo mothership.
Sept. 28, 201I IFEMA, Madrid, Spain This event provides a forum for knowledge delivery and information exchange on defense sustainment in Europe. Attendees will benefit from fist-hand information from Military and Defense agencies on how they’re overcoming current challenges and changes facing maintenance and sustainment, including budgets, cutbacks, and shifting mission requirements. Co-located with MRO Europe! Learn more and register today at www.aviationweek.com/events
HOUSTON—NASA’s Mission Management Team (MMT) is looking to May 2 at 2:33 p.m. EDT, as the earliest it can make a second bid to launch space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-134 mission to the International Space Station, following the failure of primary and secondary Auxiliary Power Unit fuel-line heaters during an April 29 countdown.
The U.S. Navy has released $1.2 billion for construction of the 14th Virginia-class submarine (SSN-787) to General Dynamics Electric Boat, marking the beginning of production of two submarines per year on the Virginia-class program.
FAR TO GO: Retired Gen. Lance Lord, former commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, says “there is a lot of work to be done to align the government’s operational requirements and timetables with the commercial constraints of the private sector when it comes to the details of acquiring, designing, manufacturing and deploying payloads into space.” Still, hosted payloads on commercial satellites are an opportunity for the U.S. government to leverage commercial investments to provide access to space, Lord stresses.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Preparations for the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-134 mission, the next-to-last flight in the shuttle program, remain on schedule for a launch attempt at 3:47 p.m. EDT April 29. Workers here completed the load of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for the ship’s Power Reactant Storage and Distribution (PRSD) system and began installing the first of 10 mid-deck science experiments on April 28.
BEIJING — Enlargement of the Japanese F-X fighter program is under consideration as the repair of all 18 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries F-2B trainers damaged in the March 11 tsunami looks increasingly unlikely.
BELGIAN LIFT: The Belgian ministry of defense on April 28 placed its transport aircraft under the European Air Transport Command (EATC) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Since it was set up in 2010, the EATC has conducted nearly 3,500 missions, including 65 aerial refuelings and the medical evacuation of 400 patients. The EATC will eventually number 200 personnel, including 22 Belgians. In the future, it could include other operators of the A400M.
LOS ANGELES — Scaled Composites marked a dramatic increase in the test rate of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) by completing two glide tests over five days, including a 16-min. 7-sec. glide on April 27 that represents the longest flight to date.
