NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala., is creating two new development offices as part of its work on NASA's new moon-Mars push. It is creating the Exploration Launch Office, which will manage the program's new launch system, and the Science and Mission Systems Office, which will "integrate the center's scientific and engineering expertise," the center said Sept. 23.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will not play an active role in the revamped Joint Unmanned Combat Air System program after it transitions to Air Force ownership in the next few months, according to outgoing DARPA Program Manager Mike Francis. Francis estimates the move to the Air Force will be complete by early November. The Air Force and the Navy still are working out the details of the new J-UCAS office, which is expected to be stood up at Dayton Air Force Base in Ohio and initially be led by a Navy program manager (DAILY, Sept. 14).
GETTING READY: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., to prepare for its January launch. The spacecraft is to be the first to visit Pluto and its moon Charon, and recently completed four months of space-environment tests at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Md., NASA said. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft.
Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center has awarded M.C. Dean Inc. of Chantilly, Va., almost $15 million more for C4ISR and information technology services, bringing the contract's total to $56.5 million. The company will provide planning, development, design, research, procurement, installation and related C4ISR/IT engineering efforts in the European and Central regions, mostly in Germany. The contracted work will be finished by next March, a Pentagon announcement said Sept. 23.
General Atomics' Altair has become the first unmanned aerial vehicle to receive an experimental airworthiness certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety Nick Sabatini. Awarded Aug. 25, the certificate "defines the airspace they can operate in and the specific limitations within which they must stay," Sabatini told The DAILY. "So it bounds that operation." Altair's operational area is in the deserts of the southwest.
NASA may allow the Access Five unmanned aerial vehicle airspace initiative to continue through fiscal 2006 before canceling it, an industry source told The DAILY. The agency had been considering terminating the program as early as the end of FY '05, or Sept. 30, but interagency pressure from other interested parties may have convinced NASA to keep the program going for one more fiscal year, according to the source.
ARMY L3 KDI Precision Products Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio, was awarded on Sept. 19, 2005, a $17,083,960 firm-fixed-price contract for FMU-143 B/B and (D-2)/B fuze systems. The work will be performed in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is expected to be completed by June 7, 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were an unknown number of bids solicited via the World Wide Web on April 12, 2005, and six bids were received. The U.S. Army Field Support Command, Rock Island, Ill., is the contracting activity (W52P1J-05-C-0069).
A variety of U.S. military aircraft, ships, equipment, and personnel were deployed in response to Hurricane Rita, which struck the Texas and Louisiana coasts on Sept. 24, the Defense Department said. Thirteen HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters from the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., and the 347th Rescue Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., flew 14 search-and-rescue missions and rescued five stranded people.
Senate defense appropriators on Sept. 26 passed the initial draft of their fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill, setting up a potential showdown with the House over naval shipbuilding, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and other weapons programs.
The U.S. Air Force has not been thorough in waiving a number of aircraft programs from compliance with a 1941 law aimed at encouraging a healthy domestic industrial base, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.
EXTENDED: Pleased with the program's success, the European Space Agency has extended the mission of its Mars Express spacecraft by one martian year, or about 23 months, ESA says, beginning from December. The move, approved last week by ESA's science program committee, allows Mars Express to "continue building on the legacy of its own scientific success," ESA says. Mars Express began its mission early last year and has been studying Mars' surface and atmosphere.
'WHITE TAIL': Even if it is not able to find customers for the system, Northrop Grumman may use the upcoming "white tail" prototype of its Hunter II unmanned aerial vehicle as a test bed for various UAV payloads, according to a company spokesman. Partner Aurora Flight Sciences is building the prototype at its facility in Starkville, Miss., and expects to deliver it next year.
CSAR-X RFP: The U.S. Air Force is expected to release a final request for proposals for the Combat Search and Rescue-X (CSAR-X) program any day now, industry sources say. Four aircraft are lined up to compete: the Bell-Boeing CV-22 tiltrotor aircraft, the Boeing HH-47 helicopter, the Lockheed Martin-AgustaWestland-Bell Helicopter Textron US101 helicopter and Sikorsky's HH-92 helicopter.
CENTER DIRECTOR: Woodrow Whitlow Jr. will be the next director of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, NASA says. Whitlow is the deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will succeed Julian Earls, who is retiring. The Glenn center focuses on aeronautics and space propulsion, space power and communications and microgravity sciences.
Sept. 26 - 27 -- Information Assurance Engineering, "The Latest Requirements, Tools and Techniques," Holiday Inn On The Bay, San Diego, Calif. For more information go to www.technologytraining.com. Sept. 26 - 28 -- 2005 Albany Symposium on The Global Business of Semiconductors & Nanotechnology, The Sagamore, Lake George, N.Y. For more information go to www.albanysymposium.org.
ARMOR TILE SETS: General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products said Sept. 23 that it has been awarded an additional $16 million contract to produce armor tile sets for Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The original $102 million contract was awarded in November 2004. Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd., Ordnance Systems, of Haifa, Israel, will share in the production workload. The work will be directed from the General Dynamics technology center in Burlington, Vt. U.S. tile production will take place in Stone County, Miss. The contract was awarded by the U.S.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said he fears that China may beat U.S. astronauts back to the moon if NASA's current schedule target of 2018 isn't accelerated. "I've been talking to a number of people that are much more knowledgeable about that than I am, [about] some things that maybe are still classified, but they believe that the Chinese are probably on the mark to get there sooner," Calvert told The DAILY.
IRAQI FLEET: While the Iraqi navy needs small patrol boats to enforce sovereignty inside the country's territorial waters, the service most needs to work on "building the ability to sustain," according to the three-star admiral leading U.S. and coalition forces in the Persian Gulf. The Iraqi navy has six patrol boats, 700 sailors and about 400 marines, with efforts going toward protecting Iraqi oil platforms, said Vice Adm. David Nichols Jr., commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and U.S. 5th Fleet. Meanwhile, the U.S.
Last week NASA's James Webb Space Telescope program received approval from the U.S. State Department to launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket, finally clearing a hurdle that added roughly an extra year of delay to the already technically challenged program.
T-45 TRAINING SUPPORT: L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace of Madison, Miss., has been awarded a $90.8 million U.S. Navy contract modification to provide contractor logistics support for the T-45 aircraft training system, the Defense Department said Sept. 23. The work is expected to be finished in September 2006.
APPROPRIATIONS: With fiscal 2006 less than a week away, Senate appropriators this week will start working on their FY '06 defense appropriations bill. The Senate Appropriations Committee's defense panel is slated to meet Sept. 26. Meanwhile, the incomplete defense authorization bill hangs in limbo in the Senate. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the senior minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other Democrats have complained that the legislation, which was ready in May, still has not been brought back to the floor since it was suspended in late July. Sen.
Northrop Grumman has finished a U.S. Air Force-funded review of re-engining options for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), potentially moving the ground-surveillance aircraft a step closer to getting new engines.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a vocal proponent of military aircraft programs built in part in his state, met Sept. 22 with Michael Wynne, President Bush's nominee to be the next Air Force secretary, and expressed his support.
UAV SERVICES: Boeing Co. has been awarded a $13.8 million contract modification to provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle services for the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, the Defense Department said Sept. 23. The work will be done onboard a U.S. Navy vessel in the Pacific and is expected to be finished in September 2006. The contract was awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md.
