DEEP IMPACT LAUNCHES: NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft launched successfully from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Jan. 12. Boeing's Delta II rocket deployed the spacecraft 34 minutes after launch, putting it on a course to rendezvous with comet Tempel 1 in July. Built by Ball Aerospace, the spacecraft will deploy a penetrator to strike the comet and expose its interior, which is believed to contain material unchanged since the birth of the solar system.
Capt. James D. Wetherbee (USN-Ret.), the space shuttle lead in the Independent Technical Authority at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, and a former astronaut who flew six times aboard the space shuttle, has retired. Steve Isakowitz has been selected as deputy associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate.a
Toronto-based Field Aviation Co. Inc. will supply the Swedish Coast Guard with three highly advanced Dash 8 Q300 Maritime Surveillance Aircraft (MSA) under a contract worth more than $80 million, the company said Jan. 11. The contract was awarded by the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration. All three aircraft are scheduled to be delivered in 2007.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program plans to proceed with five flight-tests in 2005 after concluding that a minor software change will fix a problem that arose in a late 2004 test, an official said Jan. 12. Two of the upcoming tests will involve missile shoot-down attempts, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, MDA's director. In a third test, an intercept is possible but not planned.
Preliminary results from recent tests show the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor is proving to be up to "80 times better" than the Boeing F-15 it is designed to replace, a U.S. Air Force official said Jan. 12. The difference between the two air-to-air fighters is "staggering," Air Force acquisition chief Marvin Sambur told the Defense Writers Group. "The combination of supercruise, stealth and advanced avionics gives the F/A-22 a considerable capability advantage over everyone else," Sambur said.
The Air Force plans to make the case for restoring recent Pentagon cuts to the F/A-22 Raptor program during the upcoming quadrennial defense review (QDR) this summer, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper. Shortly before Christmas, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed a program budget decision (PBD) instructing the Air Force to stop buying the Lockheed Martin fighter at the end of fiscal year 2008, stopping Raptor procurement at 181 jets instead of the 277 the service had planned (DAILY, Jan. 4).
Maj. Gen. Silas R. Johnson, Jr. (USAF-Ret.) has been appointed director of marketing, advanced tanker programs. Guy M. Hicks has been named vice president, communications.
Michel Mathieu has been named TRS chief executive officer. Terry Heil has been appointed chairman. Lou Laroche has been chosen as chief financial officer.
CARRIER VEHICLES: Belgium has ordered 220 Dingo2 all-protected carrier vehicles worth 170 million euros ($223.3 million) from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann of Munich, Germany, the company said Jan. 10. There is an option to buy 132 more vehicles. The first Dingo2s are set for delivery in late 2005. Additional deliveries are scheduled from 2006-2011. The vehicles will be built in Munich. Dingo2s hold a crew of up to eight and protect against hand-held weapons, artillery fragments, and anti-personnel and anti-tank mines.
EADS North America is holding a competition for a new aerial refueling tanker production facility and will make a site selection at the end of this year, company officials said Jan. 12. A request for information on potential center locations was issued to all 50 states on Jan. 12. An industry day is planned for Feb. 15 in the Washington area, and responses to the RFIs are due March 30. A request for proposals will be released in the second quarter of this year, said EADS North America Chairman and CEO Ralph Crosby.
NOMINATED: President Bush on Jan. 11 nominated Michael Chertoff, a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals' Third Circuit, to head the Department of Homeland Security. Chertoff, a former assistant U.S. attorney general and U.S. attorney for New Jersey, has "an unwavering determination to protect the American people," Bush said.
EADS will provide its close-range reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the French armaments procurement agency for the DRAC (drone de reconnaissance au contact) program, the company said Jan. 10. EADS is the prime contractor on the DRAC system, working in partnership with French company SurveyCopter. The DRAC contract, the largest very close-range UAV systems program in Europe, will buy 160 UAV systems from EADS Defence and Communications Systems for a total of 30 million euros ($39 million).
A contract to logistically sustain the latest version of the Global Broadcast System is likely to go to the incumbent, Raytheon Co., according to Raytheon's program director. The Air Force on Jan. 6 issued a request for information that will help it identify potential contractors for the job, but, said Alan Goldey, director of the GBS program for Raytheon, "It's going to be very hard for anybody to compete against us."
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the new chairman of the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee, said last week that there are "very serious issues" with NASA's financial footing, and that the aerospace agency will be a priority for his committee.
JTAMDO HEAD: U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Howard Bromberg has been appointed director of the Defense Department's Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO), DOD announced Jan. 11. Bromberg previously led the Army's Enlisted Personnel Management Directorate. JTAMDO, part of the Joint Staff, was formed in 1997 to ensure theater air and missile defenses are developed in a coordinated way. Its focus was expanded in November 2001 to include all air and missile defenses.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's X-50A Dragonfly unmanned aerial vehicle will resume flight-testing this spring or summer, according to DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. Built by Boeing, the first Dragonfly prototype was ruined in a March 2004 crash during a flight-test at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. (DAILY, March 31, 2004). The resumed flights will use a pre-existing ground spare that has been made flightworthy.
The Deep Impact team has made some last-minute adjustments to its planned Jan. 12 launch after discovering that the mission's Delta II rocket was somewhat overweight after being integrated with the spacecraft. Deep Impact is scheduled to launch from pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral during an "instantaneous" launch window occurring at 1:47:08 a.m. Eastern time. The weight issue was discovered during a late trajectory run-through, according to Omar Baez, launch director at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
MINEHUNTING: Sweden has purchased remotely operated underwater minehunting systems worth 70 million kronors ($10.2 million) from Sweden-based Saab Underwater Systems, the company said Jan. 11. The systems will be used on the Swedish navy's Landsort-class minehunters. France, the Netherlands and Belgium also have purchased the systems, Mikael Grodzinsky, president of Saab Underwater Systems, said in a statement.
