NAVY SAVE: The U.S. Navy is hoping to reprogram about $40 million in its fiscal 2009 budget to provide advance procurement funding for three F-35 carrier variant aircraft, according to a senior defense official. The funding was stripped from the budget by Congress earlier this year. Without it, Joint Strike Fighter program officials say they will have to either extend the initial operational test and evaluation period or split it into two segments — one for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions and a separate test period for the carrier version.
STENNIS CHIEF: NASA has named Arthur “Gene” Goldman the new director of Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Goldman has served as deputy director since October 2006. He replaces Bob Cabana, who left last month to take the reins at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Prior to that, Goldman served as manager of the space shuttle main engine project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., from March 2004 until he moved to Stennis in 2006.
WHAT FLIES HEAR: The hearing mechanism of flies is being used as a model for miniature acoustic sensors and sound localization techniques by mechanical engineering researchers at the University of Maryland. The work is expected to benefit the U.S. Air Force in its development of an artificial fly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that would use both hearing and vision to navigate to inaccessible locations. Scaled up, the technology also would be available for micro aerial vehicles and UAVs to improve homing capabilities.
GLOBAL BANDWIDTH: Raytheon Company will restore the available bandwidth of the Global Broadcast Service (GBS) satellite communications system over the Atlantic Ocean to support naval vessels and operations as part of the Advanced Technology Support Program III. The company will complete the integration of the Satellite Broadcast Manager facility in Norfolk, Va., with the U.S. Naval Station uplink in Rota, Spain, to provide GBS broadcast coverage. GBS is a worldwide mission support system for military forces on post, in transit and in theater.
Problems with the International Space Station’s new liquid-waste recycling system could send the space shuttle Endeavour home without a sample of processed water for evaluation on the ground, complicating plans to expand the station crew from three to six.
HERMES 450: Senior Thales executives say the company remains bullish about proposals for a quick deployment of its Watchkeeper Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to support French troops in Afghanistan, despite the recent arrival in the theater of a batch of SDTI tactical UAVs, based on the Sagem Sperwer. Executives point to the Hermes 450’s extensive Afghan flight experience — more than 30,000 hours — high survivability and features such as auto-cueing capability, which enables rapid detection and suppression of enemy fire.
ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS: Boeing is working toward certification of all its major manufacturing facilities to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 standard by the end of this year. Its Rotorcraft Systems facility in Mesa, Ariz., earned its ISO 14001 after a late-September audit by independent auditors from DNV, an accredited certification body of quality, environmental and safety management systems.
Citing low mission-capable rates and a shortfall in meeting key performance parameters, U.S. Defense Department acquisitions chief John Young continued his vocal disapproval of the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 program with reporters Nov. 20.
TerreStar says it has obtained approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to delay launch of its first dedicated hybrid mobile satellite service spacecraft until June 30, 2009, and push back its operational debut until Aug. 30 of the same year. The satellite had initially been pegged for launch on Sept. 30 and operation on Nov. 30, but ran into design problems that have affected the satellite’s reflector and S-band feed array. TerreStar also received a similar OK from Industry Canada for the deferral.
DARPA is seeking concepts for an aircraft capable of converting into a submarine that can clandestinely insert and extract an eight-person special forces team. The mission is to take off from a runway, fly 1,000 nautical miles as a conventional aircraft, fly another 100 nautical miles close to the surface, then travel the final 12 nautical miles to the coast underwater. Transit should take less than eight hours.
NEAR MISS: A joint U.S.-Japanese test of the Aegis sea-based ballistic missile defense system did not yield a target intercept. The demonstration, which took place Nov. 20, was Japan’s second flight-test of the Aegis system. The first resulted in an intercept last December. During the recent test, Japan’s Chokai destroyer tracked a ballistic missile target launched from Kauai, Hawaii, developed a firing solution, and launched an SM-3 Block IA, but the weapon failed to intercept. The Missile Defense Agency is investigating the miss.
A Boeing-led team has been selected to continue development of a system enabling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to autonomously rendezvous with a tanker and refuel. Phase 2 of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) program will involve actual fuel delivery to a surrogate UAV.
The NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover team has selected four finalist landing sites, all with ties to Martian water, as it moves toward final site selection next summer to support an Atlas V launch in September 2009. The nuclear-powered MSL rover is the size of a small car and carries much more powerful instrumentation to assess whether life evolved at any of the watery sites.
LASER HOG: The U.S. Air Force has conducted the first release of a GBU-54 Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) from an upgraded A-10C. In the test at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., the 500-pound weapon was dropped on a Global Positioning System-designated target and then redirected in flight to a laser-illuminated target. First used in combat by a USAF F-16 in August, Laser JDAM is designed to attack moving targets, The U.S.
Canada has commissioned MacDonald Dettwiler Associates (MDA) to begin preliminary definition of a radar satellite constellation to ensure continuity of C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging capability and maintain Canada’s sovereignty over its far-flung northern reaches. The system will utilize small 1,300-kilogram (2,900-pound) satellites, barely half the mass of the existing Radarsat 2, each of which will be launched separately aboard a Dnepr-1 rocket.
The amount Congress appropriated for 20 F-22 Raptors in fiscal 2009 was incorrectly reported in a Nov. 20 DAILY article. It is $140 million. The amount the Defense Department claims it will save taxpayers by spending only $50 million also was incorrect. It is $90 million.
The U.S. Army should field a dual-surge, full-spectrum force to better address the stresses and strains of persistent irregular warfare, according to Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) chief Andrew Krepinevich.
EQUATORIAL SHOTS: Sea Launch and Intelsat have signed an umbrella launch contract covering five missions from Sea Launch’s mobile equatorial launch platform that will be conducted from late 2010 through 2012. Sea Launch has performed eight successful missions for Intelsat, including Galaxy 18 and Galaxy 19 this year.
Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough took time out from cleaning and lubricating a damaged rotary joint on the International Space Station Nov. 20 to grease up the station arm for a better chance at grappling an automated Japanese cargo carrier next year.
NASA conducted a roughly four-second ground firing of the Launch Abort System (LAS) motor for the Orion spacecraft at Alliant Techsystems’ (ATK) facility in Promontory, Utah, on Nov. 20, marking the first test of its kind since the Apollo era and clearing the way for the first integrated pad abort flight-test this coming spring at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
NEW YORK – The Pentagon plans to begin adding more personnel to the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) in an attempt to bolster the work force responsible for overseeing billions of dollars worth of contracts.
Crews on the International Space Station and the space shuttle Endeavour have finished transferring the big equipment racks just delivered by the STS-126 mission, and are well on their way to activating the two racks that will recycle urine and other liquid waste into drinkable water. Meanwhile, extravehicular activity (EVA) experts at Johnson Space Center in Houston believe they will be able to finish all of the station-lubrication work planned for the station, even without the two grease guns lost overboard on Nov. 18 (Aerospace DAILY, Nov. 19).
