The veteran NASA flight director who led the effort to bring the Apollo 13 crew home alive after a service-module explosion says the U.S. risks losing the economic benefits it gained in the push to the moon if it doesn’t back the U.S. agency’s current plan for returning to the lunar surface and pushing on to Mars and beyond.
MUOS TESTING: Virtutech Inc. of San Jose, Calif., has been named by General Dynamics C4 Systems to provide its Simics software for testing the ground segment of the U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite program. Simics is a visualization software development tool that General Dynamics can use to simulate the MUOS satellite ground systems hardware for testing and debugging purposes.
SPECIAL MISSION: With potentially large-scale job cutbacks on the horizon, NASA employees may well want to knock on Boeing’s door. The company announced May 6 it is looking for mission operations specialists with NASA experience in Houston to support the company’s bid for NASA’s Facilities Development and Operations Contract (FDOC). Prospective employees are invited to apply online or attend an open house scheduled for May 17. The FDOC program will consolidate a portion of NASA’s Space Program Operations and Mission Support Operations contracts at Johnson Space Center.
KEEP TRUCKING: The U.S. Army awarded Navistar Defense a $1.3 billion contract May 5 for thousands of trucks to support rebuilding and security efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The multiyear contract will provide 7,072 Medium Tactical Vehicles and spare parts to the Afghanistan National Police, Afghan National Army and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The contract was a follow-on to a $430 million contract awarded in 2005 for more than 2,900 vehicles and spare parts.
NEW MEMBER: Poland has become the fourth nation from Eastern Europe to join the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Plan for European Cooperating States (PECS) program. The associate status will allow the country to participate in ESA science, human spaceflight, navigation, telecoms and technology initiatives for a five-year period. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania already are PECS members.
NOT A LARK: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products and Elbit Systems of America recently conducted the first U.S. demonstration of the Skylark II Small Tactical/Tier II-class unmanned aircraft for the U.S. military, according to an April 30 statement. In March, Elbit Systems won an important competition in France to supply the Skylark 1 to French special operations forces (Aerospace DAILY, March 25).
A single Delta II Heavy rocket will send the twin spacecraft of NASA’s planned Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to the moon in the third quarter of 2011 under a new contract award to United Launch Alliance.
The United States should try to dissuade China from pursuing military dominance by attempting to make cost-benefit calculations work out in America’s favor, a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) analyst told a Capitol Hill audience May 6. The strategy promotes U.S. investments in stealthy, long-range air strike capabilities, as well as additional submarines and littoral surface combatants. Earth-penetrating weapons to defeat hardened and buried targets also are suggested, as well as electronic-attack capabilities and defenses against them.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said May 6 that if Congress does not pass the $1.8 billion Global War on Terror (GWOT) supplemental bill, the U.S. Army will be unable to pay troops in mid-June and may be forced to make a reprogramming request that would borrow from Navy and Air Force payroll funds. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote letters to members of Congress on May 5 encouraging them to pass the supplemental by Memorial Day, or money to pay Army troops will run out by June 15.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief Conrad Lautenbacher told Senate lawmakers May 6 that if NOAA is funded under a continuing resolution for fiscal 2009 it could delay the next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) system by a year. NOAA already has let contracts for the instruments to be carried on the GOES-R weather satellites, but the agency has yet to choose prime contractors to build the spacecraft or the ground segment.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – India may be looking at further purchases of the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which is mounted on the carrier USS Trenton that was sold to the Indian navy. Since renamed INS Jalashva, the Trenton arrived in India with two Phalanx weapons systems onboard. Raytheon Missile Systems is talking to India about purchasing more Phalanx systems for other ships in the Indian navy.
BAMS STOPS: The U.S. Navy has suspended work on its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program in accordance with acquisition regulations as a result of Lockheed Martin’s May 5 protest. A Lockheed Martin/General Atomics team proposing a Predator variant lost the $1.6 billion contract to Northrop Grumman, which pitched a version of the Global Hawk. Boeing, which submitted a proposal based on an optionally manned Gulfstream 550, does not plan to protest.
Researchers have pulled together real-time data on solar activity delivered by Earth-orbiting satellites and are using the Google Earth interface to produce an intuitive global electron-density map that can provide air traffic and spacecraft controllers with forecasts of ionospheric conditions that could affect radio-frequency communications.
MICROGRAVITY METALS: A microgravity experiment to be launched May 9 from Europe’s Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden will carry into space for the first time an X-ray diagnostic system designed to monitor how advanced metallurgical processes behave in real time. The system, one of four metallurgical and fluid physics experiments to be flown in the Maser 11 mission, will observe the kinetics and stability of aluminum-based metallic foam for six minutes of zero gravity, a condition that cannot be replicated on Earth for more than a few seconds at a time.
Video of astronauts conducting underwater training for China’s first extravehicular activity (EVA) – planned for the Shenzhou VII mission this fall – shows spacesuits that appear identical to Russian Orlan EVA suits. However, top Shenzhou managers say emphatically that the Chinese EVA suits have been designed and manufactured in China, not Russia.
Space shuttle astronauts assigned to the STS-124/1J International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission are scheduled to arrive at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla., on May 6 to practice for the upcoming launch of the shuttle Discovery with Japan’s big Kibo pressurized laboratory module in its payload bay.
U.S. military officials are eyeing depot support for the Joint Strike Fighter’s (JSF) F135 main engine at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., by 2012, and at the Navy’s Fleet Readiness Center Southeast, Jacksonville, Fla., around 2014.
ELECTRONIC ATTACK: The U.S. Navy, via a $101.9 million contract, will acquire a third lot of Northrop Grumman Improved Capability (ICAP) III airborne electronic attack systems for its EA-6B Prowler fleet. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2010 and will include seven complete systems plus associated piece parts and spares. The first two lots of modified aircraft have deployed several times to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. Navy expects to award the Block III contract for the next eight Virginia-class attack submarines in December, according to a May 2 statement. But the Navy still is preparing to negotiate the terms of the Block III deal with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat, which split the program (Aerospace DAILY, March 25).
The fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill cleared last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee includes $160 million for U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft depot maintenance. The bill, approved unanimously by the committee, authorizes $96.9 million for Air Force B-52 flying hours and depot maintenance. The committee noted that the Defense Department failed to include adequate funding in its $612.5 billion FY ’09 budget request to meet the requirements set in the FY ’08 authorization act.
RADAR LOVE: Boeing has selected General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products to supply the new wideband radomes for the U.S. Air Force F-15 Radar Modernization Program. The award covers design, development and production. The program will upgrade F-15Es with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system. The anticipated program start date is no later than the end of the third quarter of this year (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 13, 2006).
SBX TESTING: Boeing asserts that by the end of this year, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) should get to test full involvement of the Sea-based X-Band (SBX) radar in the ground-based midcourse missile defense system. Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, says in the next test – slated for summer – the radar “will be playing off-line in a more complex way.” Then, “MDA will then make a final decision and in the last test it will be more involved,” he says.
