To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) Oct. 27 - 29 — SAFE Association 46th Annual Symposium, Grand Sierra Resort & Casino hotel, Reno, Nevada. For more information call 541-895-3012 or go to www.safeassociation.com or www.safeassociation.org Oct. 28 - 30 — The National Space INFOSEC Symposium, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, Calif. For more information go to http://www.aero.org/conferences/
REQUIREMENTS ROADKILL: A theme is developing among some of the Pentagon’s errant programs: Get the requirements right and stick with them. After days of talk that the multibillion-dollar Transformational Satellite contract award was to be cancelled (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 23), Pentagon acquisition chief John Young, through his spokesman, now says that “TSAT is a capability that the Defense Dept.
The U.S. Air Force will stand up a new major command, called Global Strike Command, devoted strictly to the nuclear enterprise, the service announced Oct. 24 at the Pentagon. “We’ve taken many corrective actions in response to painful lessons learned,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told reporters, but “more work remains to be done.” Air Force leaders released a so-called roadmap, titled “Reinvigorating the Air Force Nuclear Enterprise,” that details major actions the service will take, including:
SPEED LIVES: Blackswift may be dead, but the U.S. Air Force is still looking for a way to demonstrate a reusable hypersonic vehicle. The Blackswift was cancelled after Congress eviscerated U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Air Force Research Laboratory funding for the ambitious program to demonstrate a turbojet/scramjet-powered unmanned aircraft able to take off, accelerate to Mach 6, maneuver, return to a runway landing, then do it all again (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 13).
UNDER SCRUTINY: A Congressional push to shut down the use of Chinese launch services by overseas satellite manufacturers may move from theory to practice with the passage of the fiscal 2009 defense authorization measure. The measure, signed into law earlier this month, includes a provision instructing DOD to review whether the engagement of DOD contractors or subcontractors supporting Chinese launches poses a security risk, and instructs the secretary of defense to submit a report on the review by March 1.
SPACE WING SUPPORT: Harris Corp. will get another $60 million to continue work on its U.S. Air Force Network and Space Operations and Maintenance program, a contract it won in January. The company provides operations and maintenance support for the 50th Space Wing’s air Force Satellite Control Network under the contract, which is worth a potential $405 million over six and a half years.
Russia’s Soyuz TMA-12/16S landed pretty much on target and right on time in Kazakhstan Oct. 24, returning two cosmonauts and a wealthy American space tourist to Earth after apparently performing as planned during reentry. “The Soyuz TMA-12 has landed, just about on target,” reported Mission Control Center – Houston after the landing, which came at 9:37 a.m. local time (11:37 p.m. Oct. 23 EDT) as scheduled.
HORNET CRACKS: The U.S. Navy is inspecting all 636 of its F/A-18A-D Hornets due to the discovery of fatigue cracks in an aileron hinge on the outer wing panel of 15 of 112 deployed fighters. Failure of this aileron hinge could result in damage to the aileron or further damage to the aircraft. No aircraft have been grounded, according to Lt. Clay Doss, a Navy official. The inspection must be handled within the next 15 flight hours for each fighter. Any aircraft that do not pass inspection, which will take two weeks for the entire fleet, will be grounded pending a fix.
CLANDESTINE OPS: A secret operation in Hungary has moved 341 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Soviet era, in the form of used nuclear fuel, to a secure Russian nuclear facility. Under the responsibility of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the spent fuel was moved by truck, rail and cargo vessel with the cooperation of several international organizations. It was the largest shipment of HEU under NNSA’s global threat reduction initiative. Other shipments were made from the Czech Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria during the past year.
VEGA MOTOR: A modified Zefiro 9 third-stage motor earmarked for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new Vega light launcher has been successfully fired, improving chances that the three-stage solid fuel rocket can make its first flight from ESA’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana by the end of next year. The Zefiro 9 failed in a test in March 2007, contributing to a six-month delay in the inaugural mission.
LUNAR RETURN: LRO Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will spend the next five weeks checking out the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in a spacelike environment as preparations continue for its planned April 24 launch on an Atlas V rocket. LRO has been placed in Goddard’s four-story-tall thermal vacuum chamber for the tests, which will include mission simulations to continue training the controllers who will operate the spacecraft in orbit around the moon.
Northrop Grumman is to lead Boeing and Lockheed Martin in studying energy-optimized aircraft with integrated hybrid-electric system architectures under the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Integrated Vehicle Energy Technology (INVENT) program. Goals of the five-year INVENT Spiral 1 program include extending range and endurance 10-15 percent, increasing power and thermal capacity by 10-30 percent, overcoming cooling challenges in low-observable platforms, and reducing lifecycle costs. (See charts pp. 6-7.)
GOCE DELAYED: An investigation into an anomaly in the guidance and navigation system (GNS) of the Breeze KM upper stage on the Rockot launcher that is to carry aloft the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gravity Field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) has determined that fixing the problem, discovered Sept. 7, will take longer than thought. ESA now says it will be necessary to make more extensive hardware changes that will require two months or more of additional work by the GNS manufacturer, pushing the launch back until at least February 2009.
UNMANNED EXPERIMENT: The U.S. Navy is trumpeting its SSGN Ohio-class of Trident ballistic missile submarine’s recent reconfiguration to better support Navy commandos and covert missions, and upcoming tests with unmanned vehicles. The USS Michigan will deploy later this month to take part in exercises to demonstrate the ability of an SSGN to control unmanned aerial vehicles and experiment with unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs).
WAIT TRADE ORGANIZATION: A decision on the Airbus versus Boeing subsidy battle (formally a case between their government proxies, the U.S. and European Union) will not be resolved this year as initially planned by the World Trade Organization. The trade body has determined it can’t work through the case in time.
PARIS French lawmakers say they may ask the government to hike commitments for research and development (R&D) and on-condition maintenance foreseen under the country’s new multiyear defense spending plan.
SPRINGFIELD, Va. Rising demand for C4ISR programs is butting up against harsher budgets, resulting in a zero-sum game, according to a new Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) forecast.
The first three astronomers have been named by the Universities Space Research Association for NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the converted 747SP that will carry a 2.5-meter diameter infrared telescope at 40,000 feet operating altitudes for deep-space observation.
The U.S. Army is looking at further development of its combat-proven Joint Counter Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (JCREW) program to use its common technology baseline over a range of EW and electronic attack (EA) missions. “We’re looking at our JCREW capabilities and spiraling that into our first family of integrated electronic warfare systems,” says Col. Laurie Buckhout, chief of the Army’s EW division. “We’ll have something better and more efficient on our [unmanned aerial systems].
Faced with the prospect of not fielding its primary missile defense effort on time, NATO is considering an interim step to provide a limited capacity to commanders. At issue is progress on the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense program, an architecture and command-and-control effort to provide missile defense to deployed forces. ALTBMD will not acquire intercept systems, which are provided through member states, but it provides the system to integrate those disparate sensors and firing units. Fielding plans
Flight-testing of the U.S. military’s latest software-defined radio has demonstrated its ability to interoperate with existing hard-wired data network terminals via Link 16. The tests validated that waveforms defined by software in the new radio were identical to those generated by hardware in the current terminal.
Astronomers expect to squeeze as much science as they can out of the Hubble Space Telescope instrument that will be replaced on the upcoming STS-125 servicing mission, provided controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center can get the telescope working again.
Notions that the U.S. Air Force is planning to cut into its planned fighter force while boosting its ranks were reinforced Oct. 20 by the armed service’s new chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz. Speaking to service personnel on a tour of the Middle East, Schwartz said “we are probably going to do some of that” – referring to cuts in force structure – “and there will be pushback.” The problem, Schwartz said, is that the service’s earlier attempt to reduce costs by dropping as many as 40,000 active billets to free money for acquisitions has failed.
The first Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) spacecraft bound for geosynchronous (GEO) orbit has completed its acoustic and vibration testing, which wrapped up Oct. 17 at Lockheed Martin’s Sunnyvale, Calif., manufacturing plant.
