TARANIS SOARS: The British Project Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, will build an unmanned fast jet demonstrator the size of a T-45 Goshawk. The jet UAV will be stealthy and able to test-deploy a range of munitions over a number of targets, as well as defend itself against other manned and unmanned enemy aircraft. The first metal airframe of the Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle was cut in a ceremony at BAE Systems in Lancashire, England, Nov. 20.
Arianespace is in negotiations to purchase an additional 10-15 Soyuz rockets to add to the eight it already has on firm order. The Soyuz is being used to broaden the European company's portfolio of launch systems. Arianespace's first Soyuz launch is now penciled in for March 2009 from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana. Work is well underway to "replicate" the Baikonur, Kazakhstan Soyuz facility in the equatorial rain forest.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center soon will begin integrating a state-of-the-art seismic imager into its planned Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the first spacecraft in the U.S. agency's "Living With A Star" research effort. Built by Stanford University and the Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory, this Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) will measure the Doppler shifts of sound waves generated by hot, ionized gas.
ULYSSES EXTENDED: Europe's Ulysses solar observatory will spend another year making observations out of the plane of the ecliptic, following a unanimous decision by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Science Programme Committee to continue its service life until March 2009. The extension will give the spacecraft more time to work with NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft, which are moving apart in heliocentric orbit to provide 3-dimensional views of coronal mass ejections and other solar phenomena as they interact with Earth.
U.K. INTERESTS: U.S. defense companies with business interests in the U.K. - that is all of the major primes - will be closely watching developments resulting from the delay in the second iteration of London's Defense Industrial Strategy document. Due for publication Dec. 13, it has now been pushed back as a result of defense budget funding issues. No revised date for publication has yet been announced.
INTEROPERABLE SHIPS: The U.S. Coast Guard's Long Range Interceptor (LRI) will undergo machinery trials in December. The 35-foot long rigid hull inflatable craft will launch from rear ramps on the National Security Cutter (NSC) and proposed Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC). The OPC and NSC will be able to carry two LRIs. In the meantime, the LRI successfully demonstrated system interoperability with the first National Security Cutter (NSC) on Nov. 20.
PARIS - Rulings by the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC) will ensure satellite operators uninterrupted use of the C-band spectrum and the promise of future bandwidth in which to roll out new broadband services. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) body last week concluded four weeks of discussion at the WRC-07 conference with an unequivocal decision not to open up the 3.4-4.2 GHZ C-band to Wimax and other so-called International Mobile Telecom (IMT) users (DAILY, Sept. 12).
Raytheon's Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS) will be installed on the USS Nimitz in June 2008, after completion of the U.S. Navy's warfare system integration and interoperability testing in San Diego.
SPARTAN CHASSIS: Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles built by General Dynamics Land Systems will have key chassis components supplied and integrated by Spartan Chassis, Inc. under a $49 million subcontract order. This order is in addition to the company's $317 million MRAP subcontract orders already on the books. On Sept. 27, Spartan received a $52 million contract for Force Protection, another MRAP builder, to support the production of Cougar-series vehicles.
COTS BIDDERS: With proposals submitted by industry hopefuls Nov. 21, NASA is now pondering who should receive the roughly $175 million in seed money that was freed up when the agency terminated its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with Rocketplane Kistler (RpK). NASA expects to sign a funded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with the winning COTS provider by February 2008. That company will join SpaceX in the ranks of COTS participants actually receiving funding from NASA.
Raytheon Company has completed the final system acceptance test for Global Positioning System Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system signals over India. In the latest test, the Raytheon system demonstrated that ground elements could successfully integrate with a geosynchronous satellite over India and generate a test signal that conformed to international flight requirements for the region.
U.K. COOPERATION: British government officials are in Washington the week beginning Nov. 26 trying to nail down the fine print of a U.S.-U.K. defense trade cooperation treaty. The process has made further progress than previous efforts to ease Anglo-American defense collaboration, but all interested parties will be keeping an eye out for any signs of last-minute political hitches.
FORWARD WASP: The U.S. Marine Corps. will receive $19.3 million in Battlefield Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicle (BATMAV) systems from AeroVironment, Inc. as part of an order announced Nov. 20. The Marine Corps will procure the BATMAV systems through the Air Force BATMAV contract, awarded to the company in Dec. 2006, which provides a means for other U.S. armed services to procure these systems. Each BATMAV system consists of two Wasp III micro air vehicles, AV's advanced battery charger, spares and support services.
SCRATCH NIGERIA: U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) headquarters is not welcome in Nigeria. President Umaru Yar'Adua says he will not allow his country, Africa's most populous, to be used as a U.S. base. The Nigerian leader also opposes locating AFRICOM in the region around his country. Created by President Bush in February, the new command, consisting mostly of a small headquarters staff, is currently based in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM is slated to be fully operational no later than Oct. 1, 2008, with headquarters somewhere in Africa.
PRECISION STRIKE: Raytheon declared Nov. 19 that it won the majority share of U.S. Air Force competitive contracts for Paveway II laser-guided bomb components for fiscal 2007. It said a recent $36.1 million award made for the third consecutive Air Force majority share award for Raytheon. The company has been locked in publicity, patent and contracting battles with rival Lockheed Martin over selling the munitions (DAILY, May 27).
BEIJING - China's third space mission, to be launched next year as Shenzhou 7, will have three crew members, one more than the first manned flight by the country. The China Academy of Space Technology says one of the crew members of Shenzhou 7 will go as far as 5 meters (16 feet) from the capsule during a spacewalk, plans for which have been previously announced.
SAUDI CONCERN: Dozens of U.S. lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns with potential U.S. military sales to Saudi Arabia, particularly involving Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Many legislators seek guarantees from President Bush that the weapons could not be used against Israel. The Defense Department on Nov. 13 provided Congress with an informal notification of its intent to move forward with a proposed $20 billion sale of high-technology armaments to Saudi Arabia under Bush administration plans to arm Middle East allies against Iran.
NEW DELHI - The fifth-generation fighter aircraft Russia and India have jointly agreed to develop could begin test flights before 2015, according to Russian officials quoted here. The two partners signed an intergovernmental agreement in Moscow on Oct. 18 during a visit by Defense Minister A.K. Antony on joint development and production of a new generation of fighter.
BEIJING - South Korea plans to send a spacecraft to the moon with a locally developed two-stage rocket by 2020, joining the Asian space race with Japan, China and India. A South Korean lunar lander will follow in 2025 if the first probe is successful, the Ministry of Science and Technology says. The rocket design will be based on that of the KSLV 1 launcher, itself now in development, with a first stage based on the Russian Angara launcher. The KSLV 2 will be much larger than its predecessor, with a first flight planned for 2017.
Completion of another spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) Nov. 20 leaves only two more hurdles before space shuttle Atlantis can deliver the European Space Agency's long-awaited Columbus laboratory module to orbit. Derek Hassmann, ISS flight director for the Expedition 16 increment, said completion of the extravehicular activity (EVA 11) kept the Expedition 16 crew on track to recover time lost to the emergency solar array repair during the STS-120/10A assembly mission on shuttle Discovery earlier this month.
SEA LAUNCH: Sea Launch has again delayed launch of the Thuraya-3 mobile communications satellite due to bad weather at the Odyssey launch platform's equatorial launch location. Liftoff is now set for 10:25 a.m. EST Nov. 21. The mission will mark the Zenit 3-SL rocket's return to flight following the Jan. 30 rocket explosion that damaged the Odyssey platform and destroyed SES New Skies' NSS-8 satellite (DAILY, Feb. 1, June 15).
