Two Europeans will join three Russians and a Chinese astronaut in a long-term Martian mission simulation planned to begin in Moscow in early June. The European crewmembers are Diego Urbina, an Italian-Colombian with wide experience in the space field, and Romain Charles, a French quality manager at Sotira, a composite panel producer. The 520-day simulation, known as Mars 500, will take place in a sealed environment that will include mock-ups of an interplanetary spaceship and a lander and an ersatz view of the Martian landscape.
The U.S. Army is one step closer to deploying a system that will allow soldiers to drive manned vehicles remotely — or even make it possible for the vehicle to drive itself. The service’s Autonomous Navigation System (ANS) recently completed its Critical Design Review and is moving toward prototype fabrication, Army officials said May 12. ANS was designed to help drive and navigate with certain manned vehicles as well as other parts of the former Future Combat Systems unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) family.
ARMORED OVERSIGHT: House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus “Ed” Towns (D-N.Y.) is ramping up calls on the Pentagon for explanations about management of troop armor procurement and testing programs. The chairman’s “inquiry” follows a Defense Department inspector general report identifying problems with the U.S. Army’s body and vehicle armor testing process, and a review by nonpartisan congressional auditors that was critical of the testing methods used in 2008 to evaluate new ballistic vests (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 20, 2009).
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Space shuttle Atlantis and its six-man, all-veteran crew remained on track for launch at 2:20 p.m. EDT May 14 to begin the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station, currently expected to be the final flight for OV-104. “We’re ready to launch Atlantis and get this mission underway,” said Mike Moses, launch integration manager at Kennedy Space Center and chair of the Mission Management Team, which formally convened May 12.
PARIS — A government-backed plan to merge uneconomical electronics business units at Thales and Safran is off, throwing a new wrinkle into the aerospace consolidation picture.
The growing overlap of electronic warfare, information operations and cyber-invasion is creating an aura of mystery and some excitement around the U.S. Navy’s current competition for the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) and the U.S. Air Force’s re-entry into the world of airborne electronic attack (AEA). ITT and Boeing are teamed for the NGJ contest. Other competitors include Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. A downselect to two or three teams is expected before the prototype demonstration phase starts in January 2011.
CARRYING ON: Northrop Grumman’s shipbuilding division has as expected received a $186.6 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract from the U.S. Navy to continue engineering and design for the newest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78). “Now that the design is in the three-dimensional product model our effort is focused on the production of instructions for the shops and ship assembly,” Mike Shawcross, vice president of aircraft carrier construction programs, said in the May 12 announcement.
AKATSUKI LAUNCH: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Venus Climate Orbiter, or Akatsuki, is due for launch at 6:44 a.m. (local time) May 18 aboard a Mitsubishi H-IIA from Tanegashima Space Center. Previously called Planet-C, the 500-kg. (1,100-lb.) spacecraft will study Venus’ atmosphere, with an emphasis on its unusual winds, sulfuric acid clouds and lightning storms. After a six-month transition, it will be placed in a highly elliptical 300 km. x 80,000 km. (185 mi. x 50,000 mi.) orbit inclined 172 deg. The orbit will take 30 hr. to complete.
NEW DELHI — The Data Link II communications system has been delivered by Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL) to Boeing for installation in the Indian navy’s P-8Is. The system — the first Indian-manufactured item delivered to Boeing as part of the P-8I program — will enable exchange of tactical data and messages between Indian navy aircraft, ships and shore establishments.
Ft. MONMOUTH, N.J. — Airborne intelligence and surveillance is now becoming a major, perhaps indispensable, tool for network and electronic attack. The U.S. Army has grasped the idea that to give digital weapons a chance for success in the battlefield, ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) must be available to find emitters, identify them, map the networks they operate with, and precisely locate the nodes of importance for digital or electronic attack or exploitation.
FORCE RESTRUCTURE: The U.S. Air Force’s proposed force realignment starting in Fiscal 2011 will be driven by so-called insourcing initiatives — targeted at reining in contracting spending — and evolving missions. Program-related actions previously announced make up more than 90% of the changes, with a third of the total revolving around contractor-to-civilian conversions, first unveiled a year ago.
Mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity in the aerospace and defense industry is bouncing back to pre-recession levels as lower prices and a better economic outlook lure buyers off the sidelines. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) counted 68 aerospace & defense (A&D) transactions in the first quarter of 2010 worth $5.1 billion.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India — India’s BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Ltd (BATL) is ready with the first prototype of an indigenous airborne launcher developed for the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. The air-launched version of the missile will be fitted to the Su-30 MKI aircraft. BATL Executive Director N.R. Vishnu Kartha tells AVIATION WEEK, “This is the first time a mobile launcher for [the] BrahMos missile is being manufactured. We are ready with the first prototype.”
LONDON — Liam Fox’s opening gambit as the U.K.’s secretary of state for defense includes the warning that “resources will be tight” and that the “organization and the structure” of the defense ministry will need to be re-examined. Fox was appointed May 12, the day after the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agreed to a deal covering the formation of a coalition government. Conservative leader David Cameron replaces Labour’s Gordon Brown as prime minister, while the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg becomes the deputy prime minister.
Managers at NASA headquarters are “pursuing” a robotic landing on the Moon or “other planetary body” within about four years to test precision landing and perhaps other technologies that will be needed to enable deep space exploration under the Obama administration’s emerging space policy. Before that, they will use vehicles developed for the Centennial Challenges lunar lander contest as flying testbeds for the technology, according to the official in charge of the effort.
BROUGHTON, Wales — Moisture-sensitive strain gauges on the propellers of the A400M’s TP400D turboprop engines that have slowed flight testing will likely be removed soon, opening the door for an increase in the pace of flight trials. The strain gauges are needed to measure stresses on the blades in flight. But because of poor weather at the primary flight test centers in Seville, Spain and Toulouse, the A400M in many cases could not fly, setting back the pace of flight trials.
The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry saw profits and backlog decline in 2009, but weathered the brutal economic downturn better than many other industries, a new study finds. Deloitte LLP’s May 11 analysis of 91 A&D companies and units worldwide found that the industry’s operating earnings decreased by 15% last year, to $47.9 billion. But the decline was mainly driven by large program write-offs at Boeing, EADS and BAE Systems.
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio — U.S. Air Force officials are working to reduce the number of undefinitized contract actions (UCAs) used by the service to procure weapon systems as a result of some criticism that this procurement tool has been used too often.
U.S. military cyber-defense forces will be pulled into managing cyber-attack-triggered catastrophes just as they support large-scale natural disasters, former CIA chief James Woolsey predicts.
SECURE BORDERS: The Indian government is expediting efforts to upgrade flagging infrastructure in border areas, Defense Minister A.K. Antony assured members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee that overlooks defense-related programs. “The government has authorized the Border Roads Organization (BRO) to outsource the job of airlifting machinery and material to difficult terrain, as assets of the Indian Air Force are overstretched,” Antony said in a statement from the defense ministry.
Deferred funding for maintenance and upgrades has left NASA’s laboratories ill-prepared for the work they are likely to face if Congress accepts the new emphasis on technology development for space exploration in the agency’s Fiscal 2011 budget request, a panel of the National Research Council has found.
LONDON — Iran is likely outgrowing the level of ballistic missile technology it can secure from North Korea, though previous worst-case fears about the speed of development of an intercontinental system have proved unfounded. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) contends in its May 10 report, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities,” that Tehran is unlikely to be able to field a liquid-propellant-based ballistic missile “capable of targeting Western Europe before 2014 or 2015.”
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The countdown for what is planned to be the last launch of space shuttle Atlantis began at 4 p.m. EDT on May 11 here at Kennedy Space Center, with liftoff targeted for 2:20 p.m. EDT on May 14. The ship’s payload bay doors were closed for flight following a final inspection of the primary cargo for the STS-132 mission — the Russian-made Mini Research Module 1, or Rassvet, and the Integrated Cargo Carrier holding batteries, a space-to-ground antenna and other equipment for the International Space Station.
