Early results of cost analysis by the Augustine human spaceflight panel have found no good options for continuing human exploration of space within the constraints set by the Obama administration’s fiscal 2010 budget plan for NASA. “This budget is simply not friendly to exploration,” panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said during the group’s final public meeting in Washington Aug. 12. “It’s very difficult to find an exploration scenario that fits within this very restrictive budget guidance that we’ve been given.”
The future U.S. Defense Department will enjoy record spending but still be continuously squeezed by de facto budget limitations and growing costs, leading the Pentagon to face the irony of having to cull capability priorities, according to new independent analyses in Washington.
BACK DOWN UNDER: A new two-year, AUS$4.32 million contract with the Underwater Centre Fremantle (TUCF) will allow the Australian military to once again train its submariners to escape their vessels, the defense ministry has announced. Since early 2009, interim pressurized escape training for Royal Australian Navy submariners — which simulates the escape from a Collins-class submarine including the effects of water pressure — has occurred in Quebec, Canada.
While the Chinese navy continues to improve, experts say questions remain over just how strong the Asian sea force is, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. Still, CRS points out, the Chinese navy question is coloring U.S. military planning. In the debate over future U.S. defense spending, including deliberations taking place in the current Quadrennial Defense Review, a key issue is how much emphasis to place on programs for countering improved Chinese military forces in coming years,” CRS says in its July report.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is looking at the Boeing 160T Hummingbird unmanned aerial vehicle for some of its missions, and waiting for the funding to field it with support from the Army’s program office for unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Running mission control and gathering data from NASA’s Deep Space Network to support the Kepler planet-hunting mission is giving students at the University of Colorado at Boulder hands-on aerospace training that is hard to get. While the university’s mission support is not unique, its Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) has one of the richest heritages of any school in support of NASA missions and aerospace. Kepler’s prime contractor, Ball Aerospace, is located nearby in Boulder and traces its heritage to LASP.
CRY A LITTLE: Argentina’s economic troubles have pushed its military modernization plans out to at least 2025, according to U.S. consultancy Forecast International. “As long as the Argentine economy is in a slump, prospects for procurement remain dim,” analysts there said in a statement. So far this year, Argentina has suspended the army’s Gaucho wheeled light vehicle program, the navy’s new offshore patrol vessel, and procurement of Russian Mi-17 helicopters.
The U.S. Army’s Raven small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) will benefit from several upgrades in the near term to keep up with demand from the field, according to the service’s UAS project manager, Col. Gregory Gonzalez. Gonzalez and his deputy, Tim Owings, addressed reporters at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) show in Washington Aug. 11. Gonzalez said the Army has tested a digital data link (DDL) for Raven and is on track to field the system at the start of fiscal 2010.
NASA has assigned the crew for space shuttle mission STS-134, which will deliver the long-delayed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station (ISS). U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Kelly will command STS-134, which is set to launch in either July or September of 2010. Retired Air Force Col. Gregory H. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission Specialists will be Air Force Col. Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff and Andrew Feustel. European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori also will serve as a mission specialist.
The U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has whittled down prospective bidders for its unmanned cargo lift contract to two competitors: the Boeing A160T Hummingbird and the Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-MAX helicopter. Eliminated from the competition are the Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout and the MMIST SnowGoose.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini South telescope in Chile to peer nearly 11 billion years into the past have discovered stars in a small, distant galaxy moving at speeds of 1 million miles per hour – roughly twice the speed at which our sun moves through the Milky Way.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — The U.S. Navy is facing a long slog in its effort to define and standardize interoperability for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.
Satellite communications company Iridium Satellite LLC reported growth in subscriptions and revenue for the second quarter of 2009, which the company says offset declines in equipment sales tied to the economic recession.
BACK ON: South Korea has rescheduled the first launch of its first space rocket for Aug. 19, following a delay caused by a diagnostic error during testing. Data showing a malfunction on a pump in the Russian-built first stage of the KSLV-1 rocket have been found to be erroneous. A launch was previously scheduled for Aug. 11 (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 4, 10).
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — U.S. Navy specialists gathered near Patuxent River, Md., for Naval Air Systems Command’s annual unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) demonstrations are looking into the future of unmanned sensors, platforms and operations.
The production rate of Boeing subsidiary Insitu’s ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which was 35 vehicles a month at the beginning of the year, has reached 54 a month to meet operational needs worldwide, according to the company.
PAK-FA: Russian air force chief Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin appears to still be confident that the prototype of Russia’s fifth-generation combat aircraft, known as a PAK-FA, will be flown before the end of the year. “I believe that this year we will certainly take this plane into the air,” Zelin is quoted by Russian news agency TASS, August 11. When Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Komsomolsk-on-Amur production site in May, Zelin apparently briefed him that the prototype Sukhoi T-50 would be flown in October or November.
WEBSTER FIELD, Md. — The U.S. Navy is preparing its MQ-8B Fire Scout for deployment this fall aboard the frigate USS McInerney (FFG 8) to perform counternarcotics mission in the Caribbean. The deployment is on schedule for early October, says Capt. Tim Dunigan, Navy Fire Scout program manager. The aircraft has been going through shakedown flight tests for months.
On the heels of a trio Pentagon Inspector General (IG) reports about electrical safety in combat zones, the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID) has concluded that while private and government officials failed to do their jobs properly, no one did anything criminally wrong in connection with the January 2008 electrocution death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth in Iraq. Maseth was electrocuted while showering in his quarters at the Radwaniyah Palace.
A new group has formed under the leadership of former NASA science directorate chief Alan Stern to try to further the research and education potential of the current crop of suborbital reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) under development by industry. The Suborbital Applications Researchers Group (SARG) plans to have its first meeting Aug. 18 in Boulder, Colo.
