TWISTED SATURN: New images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have revealed enormous cyclones at both of Saturn’s poles. The cyclone at the gas giant’s north pole is only visible in the near-infrared wavelengths because the pole is in winter. The whirlpool-like cyclone there is rotating at 530 kilometers per hour (325 miles per hour), according to NASA, which is more than twice as fast as the highest winds measured in cyclones on Earth. The images can be found at www.nasa.gov/cassini.
Raytheon is eyeing the potential world market for aircraft based on the Astor airborne ground surveillance system the company developed for the U.K. — a market some outside analysts have estimated at 30-50 aircraft. Raytheon officials won’t share their own analyses of global demand for the system, which is essentially an affordable version of the U.S. Air Force’s digitally formidable, Northrop-built E-8 Joint Stars ground-surveillance system design. Instead of a mission crew of 23, there would be only three-to-five analysts on board.
ARMY Raytheon Co., Largo, Fla., was awarded Sept. 30, 2008, a $21,635,359 cost plus fixed price contract for development effort for the Joint–Tactical Terminal senior upgrade kit. Work will be performed in Ontario, Canada, Linthicum, Md., and Columbia Md., with estimated and completion date of Oct. 1, 2010. Bids solicited were IBOP and one bid was received. CECOM Acquisition Center, Fort Monmouth, N.J., is the contracting activity (W15P7T-08-C-T210).
Iran plans another satellite launch attempt soon, according to the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Debate continues as to whether an earlier attempt this summer was a success or possibly resulted in just the upper stage of a space launch vehicle attaining orbit. The payload planned for the next attempt will be designated “Omid” (Hope) and will carry imaging and radio relay equipment. The spacecraft will be launched with a multistage booster equipped with 16 engines designed to place the satellite into a 430-mile orbit.
SPROUTING SALES: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products said last week that U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command has awarded it two new orders for Hydra-70 rockets and warheads. Worth about $85 million altogether, the awards fall under a five-year contract signed in 2005 that has a total potential value of more than $900 million if all options are exercised. Deliveries will begin in May 2010.
Scientists are puzzling over a massive planet-sized object discovered by Europe’s Corot orbital observatory that is unlike any heavenly body seen before. The object, dubbed Corot-exo-3b, is about the size of Jupiter but with 20 times Jupiter’s mass, and takes only four days and six hours to orbit its parent star.
KOREAN CAPABILITIES: The commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, Army Gen. Walter Sharp, says that despite rumors of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s health, reported missile tests and difficulty in talks over nuclear capabilities, the allied stance remains the same. “We’ve not seen anything out of the normal,” Sharp says of the otherwise famously volatile hermit state. “We continue to be concerned about the development, the proliferation and testing of missile systems in North Korea.” Meanwhile, Sharp expects to maintain the same U.S.
SPAWAR SUPPORT: The Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center-San Diego has tapped Qinetiq North America’s Systems Engineering Group to provide life-cycle support services to its Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance programs. Work on the eight-year, $206 million multiple-award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract will be done in Philadelphia.
MISSILE GRUMBLE: Israel’s outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Moscow last week meeting with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev to discuss security issues. Likely high on the agenda was the sale or not of long range air-defense missile systems such as the S-300 (SA-10 Grumble/SA-20 Gargoyle) to Iran. Interfax quoted a Russian foreign ministry spokesman saying that the S-300 would not be supplied by Russia to Iran.
The Blackswift reusable hypersonic testbed has been canceled by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after Congress slashed the program’s fiscal 2009 budget to $10 million, from $120 million. Blackswift was to demonstrate an unmanned hypersonic vehicle able to take off, accelerate to a Mach 6 cruise and return to a runway landing.
ORBITAL BOOST: Orbital Sciences Corp has unveiled plans for a major expansion of its launch vehicle research & development, engineering, production and test facilities in Chandler, Ariz. The first phase of the plan, intended to meet strong demand, especially from the Defense Department, for launch vehicles and satellites, will comprise an 82,000 square-foot building housing 330 employees. Ultimately, the expansion will add 232,000 square feet of floor area in three buildings, doubling the size of the facility.
HAWK SUPPORT: NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center has awarded a multi-year contract to L-3 Communications for support of the center’s pending operation of two Global Hawk aircraft. The contract is worth up to $15 million and covers through Sept. 4, 2013. Dryden inherited the unmanned aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, and will use them for science missions that need high-altitude, long-endurance airborne capability. The first mission is tentatively scheduled for the spring of 2009.
Elbit Systems forecasters say that within three-to-four years, at least one-fourth to one-third of all combat missions will be flown by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and a few years after that, unmanned ground vehicles will also begin to flood the market and the battlefield. Indeed, growing unmanned-ground business will bring with it an expected double-digit growth for the next decade, according to Steven Roser, Elbit’s vice president of marketing for the United States.
GRIPEN PYLONS: Aero Vodochody has concluded an agreement with Saab to build pylons for the Gripen fighter. Production of the pylons, set to begin this autumn, follows a recent accord by the two companies to identify potential work packages that can be transferred to the Czech manufacturer and to cooperate in marketing its L-159 light strike fighter/training aircraft.
FAILING GRADE: Two years out of office and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is still a figure of controversy. Revered for his vision for national security space management, Rumsfeld is now losing some of his disciples. A. Thomas Young, the chairman of the Allard Commission, a panel of space experts, says management in national security space is and has been woefully lacking. “It boggles my mind,” Young says on the subject of Rumsfeld’s leadership in this area. “You could not give a grade other than F.
HOT OPPORTUNITY: The U.S. Air Force’s nuclear mission recapitalization means security and logistics opportunities for federal information technology vendors, according to Washington-area consultancy Input. Analyst Kate Naunheim acknowledges that not all of the recently publicized recommendations require support that is scientific in nature, and in fact, many of the objectives focus more on the reorganization and logistical integrity of the nuclear mission as it stands.
COMING AROUND: Gen. David Petraeus, the incoming commander of Central Command, says Pakistani leaders are beginning to see the “existential threat to their country” posed by al Qaeda terrorists in the remote and largely ungoverned areas near the Afghan border. Petraeus, formerly head of U.S. operations in Iraq, says “there’s no question” senior al Qaeda leadership is sheltering in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North West Frontier Province.
NASA’s spaceflight schedule for the next six months or so will remain fuzzy until a key piece of hardware for the Hubble Space Telescope can finish its long-deferred acceptance testing, and it has already had some problems.
Top NASA managers believe they can overcome technical hurdles to meet the launch window for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) in September/October 2009, but at an additional cost still to be calculated.
FLINTLOCK 09: More than a dozen countries from Europe and northern Africa will participate in this month’s Flintlock 09 exercise. Gen. William “Skip” Ward, commander of Africa Command (AFRICOM) says U.S. CV-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 17) will participate in the joint Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps combined training exercise in the vast spaces of North Africa.
SIRIUS BIRD: Space Systems/Loral will supply a new telecom spacecraft for SES’s Sirius unit. The satellite, Sirius 5, will be equipped with up to 36 active Ku-band and 24 C-band transponders, with a Ka-band uplink capability. To be launched in 2011 to 5 deg. E. Long., the unit is intended to provide broadcasting and broadband services to Sirius’s core Nordic and Baltic market, as well as countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicated new calendar listing.) Oct. 13 - 14 — Defense Equipment & Support 08 Conference & Exhibition, “Supporting Operations Now and In The Future,” Central Hall, London. For more information go to www.shephard.co.uk/events
