INTEL SPENDING: The office of the Director of National Intelligence says that the U.S. government appropriated $43.5 billion to the National Intelligence Program for fiscal 2007. This is a top line figure that Congress mandated be made public in the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. Details of how this amount is allocated among intelligence agencies or programs are not released.
Before the year is out, NASA's Orion team expects to finally answer the longstanding question of whether the capsule will be recovered on land or from the water when it returns crews to Earth. One of the key design trades involved is whether or not it's worth it for Orion to carry the 1,500-pound airbag system that would be required for touching down on land, according to Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley.
PHOENIX - The business and government fascination with unmanned aircraft is likely to continue until a dominant concept takes root, but the market will still pale in comparison to stalwart aerospace and defense sectors like fighters, an analyst told an industry audience here Oct. 30.
NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. Coast Guard is looking to other unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to provide the surveillance capability originally sought from the now-cancelled vertical takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle (VUAV) intended for its National Security Cutter (NSC), Coast Guard Adm. Ron Rabago told Aerospace Daily.
NEW ORLEANS - David Walker, comptroller general of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), believes the United States' best years lie ahead "if we wake up, recognize reality and start addressing serious sustainability challenges we have as a nation." Walker spoke before a large audience at the Coast Guard Innovation Expo here Oct. 30, telling the group "the private status quo is unsustainable...we cannot accept it because it will threaten our future."
NEW DEHLI - India's much-delayed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program received a boost last week when it successfully test-fired the Close Combat Missile R-73 at the air-to-air range off Goa's coast. The test-firing marks the start of the LCA's weaponization - the focus of its current initial operational clearance phase. The test was done at 7 kilometers (23,000 feet) altitude and 0.6 Mach and was conducted from the mobile telemetry vehicle. The Indian navy's INS Hansa provided all support for the flight trial. Missile integration
SES Chairman/CEO Romain Bausch says his company expects to finalize orders by year's end for a first Mexican satellite, QuetzSat-1, and an additional spacecraft for its New Skies unit. Like Ciel-2, a new Canadian satellite to be launched in late 2008, QuetzSat-1 will be pre-leased to EchoStar. The New Skies unit will replace an aging spacecraft that was initially due to be replaced at a later date, permitting the older satellite to be moved to a new slot.
The Boeing Company has opened its first F-15E simulator-based mission training center for the 366th Fighter Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. The training center provides two high-fidelity, dual-cockpit F-15E simulators with a 360-degree visual system, a synthetic environment and instructor/operator and brief/debrief stations, Boeing said Oct. 29.
HOUSTON - A tear that appeared in one of the International Space Station's (ISS) solar arrays just moments before it was fully redeployed Oct. 30 makes planning the remainder of the STS-120/10A ISS assembly mission even more difficult than it was when all the engineers had to do was figure out what was fouling one of the two big joints that rotate the solar arrays.
LUNAR ASSIGNMENTS: NASA on Oct. 30 announced the dispersal of work on lunar exploration systems among its field centers. Johnson Space Center in Houston will lead the lunar lander and surface systems project, while Kennedy Space Center, Fla., will have responsibility for final lunar lander assembly and in situ lunar resource utilization. Marshall Space Flight Center, Ala., will be element lead on the lunar lander descent stage.
Recent statistics from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center and an Aerospace Daily analysis of Army safety data suggest that the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan are safer - in terms of accidents - than they were earlier in the conflicts. Further, there has generally been a far greater risk of being in an accident during peaceful or homebound operations, according to a computer analysis of nearly 1 million Army safety records from different databases dating back from 1972 to the last quarter of 2004.
TRIALS COMPLETE: The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholf completed successful propulsion dock trials at the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems facility in Pascagoula, Miss., last week. The embattled National Security Cutter (NSC) is 90 percent complete. The dock trials, which ran for two weeks, were conducted to prove out the ship's propulsion train, which consists of the engines, combining gears, shafts and propellers. The NSC will undergo machinery trials later this year.
HOUSTON - The most complex International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission on the manifest has gotten even more complicated, with a one-day extension to permit thorough inspection of a key mechanism found to be contaminated with foreign object debris (FOD).
The U.S. Air Force needs better financial controls over its Air Force Network-Centric Solutions (NETCENTS) contract, a recent Pentagon Inspector General's (IG) report says. The NETCENTS contract provides the Air Force, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies a primary source of networking equipment and system engineering, installation, integration, operations, and maintenance. The multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract has a $9 billion order ceiling and a base contract term of three years with two one-year options.
MEANWHILE: While NASA grapples with a problem on a crucial International Space Station (ISS) joint (see story), the complex robotic operations needed to move the station's P6 truss/array combination from its temporary position atop the ISS to the far end of the port truss have gone smoothly. Before astronaut Dan Tani found foreign object debris in the joint on Oct. 28, he and fellow STS-120 crewmember Scott Parazynski disconnected the 34,994-pound unit so the station and shuttle robot arms could pass it back and forth en route to the end of the truss.
PHOENIX - The first tactic many aerospace and defense companies turn to when filling their program management (PM) needs is to poach appealing managers from rivals, several industry participants say, and they are increasingly aware that it is shortsighted and may add to headline-grabbing program management issues.
NEW ORLEANS - The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is trying to change the culture inside the intelligence community to one of open information sharing to improve maritime domain awareness (MDA), says U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Richard Kelly, director of global maritime intelligence integration (GMII).
NEW ORLEANS - U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Keith Ingalsbe discussed the pending November release of a request for proposals (RFP) for his service's Nationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS) at the Coast Guard Innovation Expo here Oct. 29, the same day Northrop Grumman announced its intention to compete for the design, integration, installation and testing of NAIS. "This is not just a black box," Ingalsbe said. "It's a compilation of computers, receivers, transmitters and antenna...that pass information using an ingenious, self-organizing protocol."
