Boeing is bidding as a prime contractor for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, the deadline for which closed Sept. 22. Boeing is teamed with Bigelow Aerospace on the venture, as well as being a subcontractor itself on three other teams. Around 60 bidders from industry and academia have registered with the space agency to take part in the contest, which is using Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds to help develop and demonstrate commercially led human spaceflight capabilities.
More than a year after scathing accusations rocked the U.S. Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), key senators, government investigators and even Obama administration officials appear skeptical that enough reform is taking place in the Defense Department’s internal auditing unit, according to a congressional hearing Sept. 23.
CHINA LAKE, Calif. — The need for non-kinetic, more-kinetic, directed energy and electronic weapons is changing the complexion of research at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center here.
NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft will perform its third and final flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29, getting one last gravity assist to position itself to enter the planet’s orbit in 2011. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the surface, taking more than 1,500 pictures and giving scientists their last close look at the planet’s equatorial regions. The first flyby took the spacecraft over the eastern hemisphere in January 2008, and the second took it over the western side in October 2008.
LOST CAUSE: An MQ-1 Predator flying a mission in Afghanistan lost contact with its ground control station and presumably crashed in a forward operating area May 13, according to a U.S. Air Combat Command accident investigation board report released Sept. 22. The Predator, assigned to the 15th Reconnaissance Squadron at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., was not recovered and no crash site has been located. The aircraft loss is valued at about $3.9 million. The aircraft lost its return link and attempts to re-establish it were unsuccessful.
Bad weather moving in from the Atlantic Ocean forced the Sept. 23 scrub of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) Demo mission on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Launch from Space Launch Complex 17B was slated for a window of 8-9 a.m. EDT. A launch will be attempted again during the same window Sept. 24. Weather is expected to slowly improve over the next few days.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched India’s Oceansat-2 remote sensing satellite and six nanosatellites for international customers Sept. 23 on the fifteenth successful flight of the country’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
MADRID, Spain — Airbus is preparing to begin handing over A330-200 multirole tanker transport (MRTT) aircraft to four nations as the program transitions from development to deployment.
BEIJING — A heavy helicopter that China’s Avicopter proposes to develop with Russia’s Oboronprom would go into service in five to 10 years, according to Avicopter Vice President Xia Qunlin. The aircraft would weigh more than 20 tons, Xia says. Russian reports suggest the proposed weight is about 30 tons. An agreement to build the helicopter has not been finalized. The division of work on the aircraft also is undetermined.
The Honduras Air Force on Sept. 22 took over operations of the country’s four international airports, closing them for commercial service for an unknown period due to civil unrest. The de facto government of the country imposed nationwide curfews lasting until 6 p.m. on Sept. 22-23 to quell violent civil unrest.
The Netherlands is looking to upgrade its Mk-48 torpedoes used on Walrus-class submarines. In a letter to the Dutch parliament, the ministry’s state secretary, Jack de Vries, made the case for modernizing the 30-year-old weapon. The Dutch standard is still optimized for blue-water operations, which the government points out is of limited value in brown water conditions that are of greater interest these days.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey program office is taking the long-term view on a program that has transitioned from a development to an in-service mind-set, according to new program manager Col. Greg Masiello.
CASELLE, Italy — The Italian government and Alenia Aeronautica are in negotiations on how to finance the domestic F-35 final assembly and checkout (FACO) facility in light of fiscal belt-tightening brought on by the global recession. Details must be finalized by January to maintain the schedule of delivering the first F-35 assembled at the Cameri Air Base, Italy, facility by 2014, says Giovanni Bertolone, chief executive officer of Alenia Aeronautica. The facility is to be government owned but contractor operated.
PARIS — The Brazilian government has extended the deadline of the bidders for the F-X2 fighter program to submit their final offers, following confusion after the country’s president announced that the choice already had been made. The government says Saab, Boeing, and Dassault now have until Oct. 2 to hand in the documentation to the Brazilian air force, which is running the program. The government says that until then, all three can provide improvements to their initial offer to get Brazil to buy the Gripen, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet or Rafale.
Launch of the U.S. Air Force’s secretive Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) Flight 1 Space Plane has been rescheduled for April 2010 following several shifts in the busy Cape Canaveral launch manifest. The OTV is the Air Force-led X-37B, a Boeing Phantom Works-built derivative of the X-37 technology demonstrator originally developed for NASA’s “Future X” project of the late 1990s aimed at future orbital vehicle development. According to updated United Launch Alliance launch plans, the vehicle will be launched aboard the 501 version of the Atlas V on April 10, 2010.
Boeing is hoping that a counterinsurgency aircraft designed during the Vietnam War can be reborn to meet the U.S. Air Force’s growing irregular warfare requirements. The company is offering an updated OV-10 Bronco to meet the Air Force’s Light Attack Armed Reconnaissance (LAAR) specification, and believes the design could perform some of the companion Light Mobility Aircraft’s (LiMA) requirements.
A seasoned crew of spaceflight veterans will take the space shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station (ISS) on the final scheduled shuttle mission on the NASA flight manifest. Steve Lindsay, the head of the astronaut office at Johnson Space Center, will command Discovery on the STS-133 mission, an eight-day logistics and resupply flight now scheduled to lift off on Sept. 16, 2010. Joining him will be pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Alvin Drew, Michael Barratt, Tim Kopra and Nicole Stott.
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BEIJING — A last-minute decision by the Russian space agency Roscosmos to postpone launch of its Phobos-Grunt probe to Mars has left China’s first mission to the Red Planet on hold for 26 months.
PAKISTANI SPACECRAFT: The China Great Wall Industry Corp. and the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmospheric Research Commission will jointly develop a communications satellite, Paksat-1R, under an agreement signed Sept. 18 in Islamabad. China is backing the project with a soft loan of 1.35 million RMB (roughly $200 million), according to China Daily.
SMALL STUFF: Ruag Space and AAC Microtec of Sweden are preparing to fly a package of miniaturized control, computer and mass memory components intended to show the feasibility of carrying advanced subsystems on nanosat-class spacecraft. The package, weighing just 120 grams, will be the first in space based entirely on 3D wafer-level packaged (3D-WLP) microsystem technology. It features a plug-and-play 3D-WLP architecture, dubbed Inovator, built for OHB System with funding from the Swedish National Space Board.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Rolls-Royce a five-year, $7 million engine management services contract aimed at improving operational efficiencies and cost-effectiveness for engine monitoring data. The award covers work at seven military bases in the U.S. and includes asset tracking and management in support of USAF airlift and aerial refueling missions, Rolls-Royce says.
