KENNEDY SPACE CENTER - Liftoff of space shuttle mission STS-117 will be delayed to no earlier than June 8-July 18 following a decision by shuttle managers that launch site repairs to the external tank will be safe and that there is greater schedule advantage to using the repaired tank than a pristine new one.
ANIK F3: An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton Breeze M rocket has orbited the Anik F3 spacecraft for Telesat Canada - its first launch of the year. The C-/Ku-/Ka-band satellite, leased to Echostar and built by EADS Astrium, lifted off at 10:54 p.m. GMT April 9 from ILS's launch pad at Baikonur, Kazakhstan. ILS plans to perform six launches this year, including the first mission with a higher-thrust Phase 2 Enhancement version of Proton in June.
The recently released Pentagon Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) for the later months of 2006 reveal a marked increase in the cost of high-profile aircraft programs, 10 of which have grown a total of $43 billion, or about 8 percent, according to SAR data. Those 10 programs highlighted in the SARs now total about $578 billion, the data show (see chart p. 5). "The increase is a healthy one," said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group. "But with rising commodity costs and other issues, it's not unexpected."
OSPREY DEPLOYMENT: Marine Corps Gen. James Conway, the commandant, will announce the deployment of the first operational MV-22 Osprey squadron April 13 at the Pentagon. Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commandant for aviation, will also speak and then a small group of reporters will fly onboard one.
The U.S. Air Force's A-10C Thunderbolts should soon be combat operational with upgraded avionics and enhanced weapons capabilities, said Col. James Ratti, 508th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron commander, and A-10 System Program Manager. Ratti said during an April 11 press briefing that he could not divulge where and when the upgraded A-10s would see combat. "You can connect the dots," Ratti said. "You know where they've been flying." The Thunderbolts have been one of the stalwart combat aircraft in Iraq since the war began.
The Pentagon has listed eight programs in its recently released Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) that breached their Nunn-McCurdy unit cost-growth limits, where the program or average unit costs have increased by 15 percent or more to their current acquisition program baselines (APB) or by 30 percent or more to their original APB.
President Bush and congressional Democrats sparred April 10 over the pending supplemental measure for fiscal 2007, with Bush asserting that the military will have to make cuts affecting personnel if supplemental funds don't become available by April 15, while Democrats maintained they are doing what voters asked for in the 2006 elections. Both sides declared their willingness to meet to talk about the supplemental - but without backing down from their positions.
COST CUTS: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, says the Navy next year will try to get a better understanding of its contractors with an eye toward cost cutting and better spending. In an April 3 appearance at the Brookings Institution in Washington, he pointed to plans to cut 10,000 sailors annually and intentions to tighten civilian employee ranks as well.
LAUNCH DELAYED: The launch of Germany's pioneering TerraSAR-X - the first commercial one-meter resolution radar imaging satellite - has been put off once again because of launch manifest problems with the Dnepr-1 booster. The mission, initially set for October 2006 and most recently for late March/early April, will now slip until late May/early June, says German aerospace center DLR. DLR is providing part of the funding for the mission, with the remainder provided by EADS/Infoterra, which will operate and market the spacecraft.
Northrop Grumman and its KC-30 Tanker Team, including EADS, are "in this competition to win it," the group declared April 10 in announcing that they had submitted their proposal to the U.S. Air Force. More than 300 representatives of Northrop Grumman, EADS, General Electric, Sargent Fletcher, Honeywell and other potential KC-30 tanker suppliers labored longer than two-and-a-half years on the bid, Northrop officials said.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) remains concerned about the risks of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's (JSF) development plan, despite a 2006 blitz of reports and meetings in Washington by prime contractor Lockheed Martin aimed at assuaging such concerns. Comparing the JSF plan to that of Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor, GAO again cites concerns over concurrent development and procurement, cost growth and program delays in a recent report on tactical aircraft.
NATO LAW: President Bush on April 9 signed the NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, according to the White House. The new law reaffirms U.S. support for continued enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and designates Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine as eligible to receive assistance under the NATO Participation Act of 1994. It also authorizes fiscal 2008 appropriations - which have been requested but remain far from finalized by Congress - for military assistance for these countries, the Bush administration said April 10.
NEW CREW: The Expedition 15 crew arrived onboard the International Space Station April 9. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov and Space Tourist Charles Simonyi docked in their Soyuz spacecraft two days after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On April 20 Simonyi will return home with Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, who have been living in space since last September.
COLORADO SPRINGS - Bigelow Aerospace will charge "sovereign customers" - nations that want to send their astronauts into space - $14.95 million to spend four weeks in one of the company's proposed inflatable orbiting modules. That time can be doubled for another $2.95 million. Private companies that want to lease a module for industrial research would be charged $88 million per year for a full 350-cubic meter module, and as little as $4.5 million per month for a half-module.
Arianespace affiliate Starsem has set the first Soyuz launch of the year for May 22, carrying the first of two Globalstar replenishment payloads. It will be preceded in early May by an Ariane 5 mission, carrying Intelsat's Galaxy 17 and the SES Astra 1L communications satellites.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has repositioned its GOES-10 satellite over South America to help detect severe weather and forest fires sooner in the region, U.S. and Brazilian officials announced April 10.
This month's public chastisement of the shipbuilding industry by U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter and Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) close scrutiny of the Air Force's handling of its combat, search and rescue (CSAR-X) replacement may be a harbinger of things to come, according to defense officials and analysts. Navy and Defense Department officials also warned this month that the Pentagon and its services are not fooling around any more when it comes to changing the way they spend their money.
D5 EXTENSION EXTENDED: Lockheed Martin said April 9 that the U.S. Navy awarded it a $135 million contract modification to continue the Trident II D5 Life Extension program. The award comes on top of the $654.9 million contract Lockheed Martin received earlier this year for fiscal 2007 production and deployed systems support for the D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile program (DAILY, Jan. 16). Deliveries under the original D5 contract, which called for production of 425 missiles, began in 1989, and the final two missiles are scheduled for delivery this year.
