Early next month NASA will begin conducting seaworthiness tests of a full-size mockup of the Orion capsule in the Atlantic Ocean to give engineers a feel for how difficult it will be to recover the spacecraft, as well as what kind of conditions the crew can expect.
BRADY’S HUNCH: Gen. Roger Brady, chief of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), says he is “having success” in making sure that the largest number of F-35s eventually operating in Europe belong to USAFE. Currently, several allies are scheduled to receive the new Joint Strike Fighter ahead of USAFE. Those nations have a full plan to transition to the F-35, and USAFE would like to transition at the same time, Brady said. “We have to have them at the same time as the allies,” he told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast last week.
AIR FORCE The Air Force is awarding a cost type contract to International Business Machines Corp. of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., for $16, 246,981. The contract will provide the Millimeter-Wave Automatic Radio program focus on the development of sub-blocks of a millimeter-wave transceiver chip including local sensors, actuators, and control algorithm. At this time, $2,763,895 has been obligated. AFRL PKDA, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8650-09-C-7924).
The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) March 28, winding up a 13-day mission to give the International Space Station (ISS) its fourth and final solar array wing and life support equipment needed when the crew doubles to six in May. Discovery commander Lee Archambault and pilot Tony Antonelli flew Discovery over the Yucatan Peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico and Florida before executing a wide left turn to bring Discovery down to a 3:14 p.m. EDT landing on Runway 15 at the KSC shuttle strip.
NASA managers have decided to position the space shuttle Endeavour on Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B when sister ship Atlantis lifts off from Pad 39A to service the Hubble Space Telescope, a move that will delay the first flight-test of the shuttle follow-on vehicle by three or four weeks.
Qatar expects to double its order for Boeing C-17s to four as part of broader plans to bolster its strategic airlift capability around the Middle East region and beyond. Speaking to Aerospace DAILY at a ceremony at Boeing’s Long Beach, Calif., facility for the nation’s first C-17, Qatar Armed Forces airlift selection committee head Brig. Gen. Ahmad Al-Malki says: “We’re looking for two more, and expect to sign for these around the end of the year.”
Lockheed Martin has begun two weeks of hover pit tests at its Fort Worth, Texas, development center on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The tests, which began March 19, have been delayed by high winds and rain but will consume about two weeks of actual constrained flights up to the full 40,000-pound operational thrust level, according to Bill Gostic, director of F135 engine programs at United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney.
LONDON The British Defense Ministry may be girding its loins to make a decision on what it plans to do, if anything, about consolidating the basing for some of its helicopters. Under Project Belvedere, the ministry has been considering co-locating air force and army support helicopter units, but progress has been leisurely.
RED DRAGON: The British Defense Ministry’s abortive Red Dragon project to develop a military aircraft maintenance hanger at its St. Athan site is being criticized by government financial watchdog the National Audit Office. The overall development was undercut by a shift in the ministry’s approach to fast-jet support, which meant the hanger was no longer needed for the purpose it was built for in 2004.
NUCLEAR POSTURING: British unilateralists harboring any hope — however remote — that the Conservative Party might revisit the U.K.’s commitment to replacing the country’s present nuclear deterrent if returned to government, are being dashed. Liam Fox, the Conservative Party’s shadow defense secretary, spelled out its position during a debate in the House of Commons last week. “Nuclear weapons simply cannot be un-invented; they will remain part of the international security picture in the future,” Fox says. But while arguing that the U.K.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Mar. 30 - 31 — 2009 Shephard Search and Rescue (SAR) Conference and Exhibition, “Working Together For Global Solutions,” Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Washington, DC. For more information email [email protected] or go to www.shephard.co.uk
LOS ANGELES Scaled Composites has completed the third, and so far longest, test flight of Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft being developed to ferry the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft to its release altitude. During the flight, which took place from Mojave, Calif., on March 25, the WK2 flew for over 2.5 hours, and reached a maximum speed of 140 knots and an altitude of over 18,000 feet.
If Pentagon budget cuts come as expected, the reduced funding could spell less testing for the U.S. ballistic missile defense system, despite outside criticism and congressional calls for even more, especially of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) element.
CHAIN GANG: Lockheed Martin opened a new command center last week to support the Fleet Automotive Support Initiative-Global (FASI-G) program. FASI-G is a Defense Logistics Agency program intended to provide automotive parts support for military vehicles. The new Global Sustainment Command Center will house inventory forecasting, order management and distribution operations. Lockheed Martin won the FASI-G contract to support land-based vehicle sustainment for all tactical and nontactical U.S. military land-based vehicles over the next 10 years.
NEAR PEER: The Pentagon’s 2009 report on China’s military power speculates that if Beijing continues its present rate of defense spending, it will be a military peer of the U.S. by “mid-century.” Specialists note that despite a new, less aggressive government in Taiwan, China continues to build up their arsenal along the nearby coast. Already, the island nation “no longer [enjoys] dominance of the airspace over the Taiwan Strait.
SpaceX has been selected for two new Falcon 9 missions, which would raise the number of launches for the company’s larger vehicle under contract to 21. CEO Elon Musk declines to identify the clients, but indicates “they are not U.S. government users” and predicts he will have “more commercial contracts by year’s end.”
NAVY SECRETARY: Choosing a skilled manager with some maritime experience, President Barack Obama picked former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus on March 27 to be the next Secretary of the Navy. Mabus, 60, served as an adviser and surrogate speaker for candidate Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. Mabus also has served as chairman and CEO of Foamex, a large manufacturer he led out of bankruptcy and ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the Clinton administration. Mabus served two years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer.
Changing blobs photographed on a landing strut of the Phoenix Mars lander may be the first evidence of liquid water on the Red Planet. If true, the discovery could hold profound implications for habitability there, since liquid water is considered a prerequisite for life. Scientists believe the blobs may be brine too salty to freeze in the frigid atmosphere at the Phoenix landing site in the Martian arctic, where temperatures did not go above minus 5 degrees F., dipped as low as minus 140 F and averaged about minus 75 F during the mission.
RETURN TO SENDER: A congressionally-mandated study of the Missile Defense Agency’s long-term roles and missions recommends that it stick to being a research and development organization and leave procurement, sustainment and deployment issues to the individual armed services. The report, by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says services like the Navy, which developed the Aegis SM-3 interceptor, should take over responsibility for missile defense programs they originally handled. Retired Air Force Gen.
SATCOM LEASE: Astrium Services will lease UHF capacity on its U.K. Skynet 5 milsatcom network to the U.S. Navy under a recently concluded agreement. Like a previous X-band capacity arrangement through the joint DSTS-G program, the UHF capacity will be supplied via Intelsat. Separately, Intelsat said it had inked a multiyear agreement to supply up to 432 MHz. of bandwidth for UAV applications in Iraq and Afghanistan, using 12 Ku-band transponders on its Galaxy 26 satellite.
PATCH WORK: GKN Aerospace has teamed with Germany’s SCLR Lasertechnik to devise a method to fix composite structures using lasers. The partners expect lasers can be used to patch composites more quickly and at lower cost than existing techniques, which are considered more invasive. The first devices should be ready in about two years, the companies estimate. The laser is used to remove material without force or vibration, thereby maintaining the strength of the structure to be repaired, the companies say. The repair patch is then applied using a heating mat. The U.K.
