The robotic arm on the Phoenix Mars lander is beginning to expose a hard white layer just in front of the spacecraft, providing additional evidence that the high-priority water ice the mission was launched to study is within easy reach. Imagery taken shortly after landing July 25 showed two large areas of apparent water ice that had been blown free of topsoil by the spacecraft’s landing rockets. These areas, dubbed “Snow Queen” and “Holy Cow,” are under the lander, however, and not directly reachable by the arm,
BLUE RIBBONS: A task force asked to review Defense Department’s nuclear weapons management includes retired high-level officers Michael Carns and Edmund Giambastiani, as well as major defense policy wonks John Hamre, Franklin Miller, Jacques Gansler, J.D. Crouch and Christopher Williams. The panel, led by defense guru James Schlesinger, has been tasked by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to scrutinize nuclear stewardship across DOD after slip-ups at the Air Force led Gates to fire the secretary and chief of staff there earlier this month.
JASON-2: The U.S. has rescheduled the launch of the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission until June 20 because of an issue with backup flight batteries on the Delta II launcher. The $432 million mission, which had been planned for June 15, is intended to ensure continuity of vital sea-surface height measurements in the event Jason 1, launched in 2001, falls silent. The mission is funded by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Eumetsat and French space agency CNES.
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER – A contractor team headed by Oceaneering International Inc. will build the next-generation spacesuit for NASA under a contract potentially worth $745.9 million through 2018, the agency announced June 12. Oceaneering’s proposal defeated a bid submitted by a joint venture of veteran suitmakers ILC Dover and Hamilton Sundstrand.
A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis reports that executing the U.S. Navy’s latest version of its 30-year shipbuilding plan would cost an average of $27.4 billion per year (in 2009 dollars), or more than double the $12.6 billion a year that the Navy has spent on average since 2003.
Embraer has sold eight Super Tucano trainer/light strike aircraft to the Dominican Republic, and is poised to finalize a deal with Chile next month for another 12 units. The company also is discussing the sale of eight aircraft to the U.S. for duty in Iraq. The aircraft are earmarked for counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, which it is refocusing on in an effort to boost Super Tucano sales.
MGV DISPLAYED: Just in time to celebrate the U.S. Army’s 233rd birthday, Future Combat Systems (FCS) lead systems integrators Boeing and SAIC debuted the first Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) prototype, the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon (NLOS-C), on the National Mall and at the Pentagon June 11. The vehicle’s public unveiling marks the successful integration of the MGV NLOS-C, the first of eight such common-chassis vehicles in FCS.
Boeing-backer Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) says he is working with House defense appropriations chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) for Dicks to introduce an amendment to an appropriations bill preventing the award of the U.S. Air Force tanker replacement program to Northrop Grumman/EADS. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been reviewing Boeing’s protest of the February award and is expected to rule by June 19.
HARRIER UPGRADE: EADS Defense & Security has received an 11.5 million euro ($18 million) three-year contract to modernize four Spanish navy AV-8B Harrier jump jets. The award, intended to bring the aircraft to a standard approaching the Harrier II Plus, will feature new Pegasus 408A engines and avionics, structural and component upgrades.
PIRATICAL STUDY: Acts of piracy and terrorism at sea are increasing but there is little evidence to support concerns from some governments and international organizations that pirates and terrorists are beginning to collude, according to a Rand Corp. study. The June 5 study’s findings suggest U.S. policymakers focus too much on responding to worse-case terrorist scenarios rather than crafting policies to combat lower consequence – but more probable – attacks that could strike cruise ships or passenger ferries, according to Rand. At the same time, the U.S.
The U.S. needs more focus and coordination of its electronic warfare (EW) efforts, according to a new report from the Association of Old Crows (AOC). Titled “The Changing Face of Combat,” the report says the U.S. military “cannot expect to control the electromagnetic spectrum unless they master all aspects of electronic warfare, properly train a skilled body of EW operators, invest in future technologies, and learn to effectively apply these technologies in combat.”
An end of T-45C production and no firm plans as yet for a follow-on F-45D has Boeing looking for ways to bridge a likely gap in building aircraft. Although the U.S. Navy is expected to want more T-45s – designated the T-45D with lower cost and more capabilities – “it is our challenge to bridge to that point in time,” says Dave Schweppe, director of business development for Boeing’s global strike unit. Production will likely end late next year or in 2010.
A small air-to-surface missile developed as a private venture by Raytheon is being deployed on the Predator unmanned aircraft by an unidentified customer. The Griffin is a 42-inch-long, tube-launched missile with a semi-active laser seeker, and is intended to give the Predator and smaller UAVs an organic, self-guided direct attack capability, Raytheon says.
One discovery from the investigation of the February B-2 crash in Guam was a word-of-mouth maintenance tip that was sometimes not communicated to new personnel, but a memo circulating in the test pilot community suggests there may be more forgotten issues. Wheel speed
Boeing is considering submitting formal bids for both the F-15 and F/A-18E/F in Japan’s upcoming fighter competition. The request for proposals (RFP) for around 50 fighters is not expected until late summer, but Dave Schweppe, director of business development for Boeing’s global strike unit, says Tokyo has indicated it wants both platforms to be put forward. A final decision will not be made until the RFP is out, to assess platform suitability, but Schweppe indicates two submissions would be made.
PARIS – A dedicated space budget line and a separate space directorate are among a growing chorus of recommendations aimed at changing the way the European Union (EU) manages its space activities.
The Defense Logistics Agency improperly paid out tens of millions of dollars in fiscal year 2006, a Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says. “Documentation showed that the Defense Logistics Agency could have identified and reported about $93.3 million in improper payments associated with its programs in its FY (fiscal year) 2006 Financial Statements,” the May report says. DOD rules
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER – The space shuttle Discovery has been cleared to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida June 14, wrapping up a 14-day mission to deliver a big new laboratory module to the International Space Station (ISS) for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Preliminary data from a final inspection of the delicate reinforced carbon-carbon panels that protect the orbiter’s wing leading edges and nose cap suggest there is no damage of the sort that doomed the shuttle Columbia on its fatal February 2003 re-entry. MMT
Boeing is hoping to convince the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund a third flight-test of the HyFly dual-combustion ramjet missile demonstrator. Boeing suffered failures in the first two test flights, which effectively ended the program. But Carl Avila, Boeing’s director for Advanced Weapons and Missile Systems, notes there is quite a lot of hardware left over that could be used to relatively easily build a third missile to try one last time.
MORE LASERS: The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a $53 million contract for more than 150 Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR) systems that provide targeting capability for laser-guided, Global Positioning System-guided and conventional munitions. The delivery order is part of a previously awarded $336 million contract for LLDR components. The work is expected to be completed by 2010.
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander team is poised to begin its main science mission, having successfully broken down the clumps in the Martian soil sample that up until now threatened to prevent analysis from taking place. The breakthrough occurred unexpectedly June 11, on the seventh and final attempt to vibrate the sample, which could not be filtered through the 1-mm holes in the screen to the collecting Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) oven (Aerospace DAILY, June 10). Clumpy soil
C2PC INTEGRATION: Northrop Grumman has been awarded an 18-month, $30 million contract modification by the U.S. Marine Corps. The contract covers the transformation of Northrop’s Command and Control Personal Computer (C2PC) into a core component of the Joint Tactical Common Operating Picture (COP) Workstation (JTCW), which will be fielded by the Marine Corps in 2010. The system will complement the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below.
MATING HABITS: Lockheed Martin announced June 11 the successful mating of the spacecraft core structure with Northrop Grumman’s payload module for the second Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military communications satellite. The two companies can now begin system-level environmental and acceptance testing of the vehicle in preparation for launch in early 2010. One AEHF satellite is said to provide greater total capacity than the entire Milstar constellation currently on-orbit, with individual user data rates improved by a factor of five.
U.S. Army Communication-Electronics Command (CECOM) officials pursuing a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)/Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) system properly ruled out General Atomics (GA) Aeronautical Systems in a competition with Northrop Grumman, according to congressional auditors.
