In a bid to keep hypersonics alive at NASA, the team working on the agency's X-43A "Hyper-X" program is developing a plan for a modest follow-on effort that would begin in 2006. The future of hypersonics at NASA has been in doubt following the announcement of President Bush's new vision for space exploration, given its apparent focus on expendable rockets. A follow-on to the X-43A, the larger X-43C, already has been canceled by the agency's new Office of Exploration Systems to free funding for other uses (DAILY, March 19).
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Northrop Grumman is ahead of schedule in the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) program and expects to integrate components of the first of two flight demonstration satellites by the end of the year, according to Patrick P. Caruana, vice president for missile defense of the company's Space Technology unit.
SUB WORK: General Dynamics Electric Boat will continue submarine maintenance and repair work at the Naval Submarine Support Facility, Groton, Conn., under a $7.7 million contract modification awarded by the U.S. Navy, the company said. The initial contract, awarded in 2001, will be worth more than $153 million over five years if all options are funded, the company said.
Timken Aerospace has been named the approved bearing repair service provider for Rolls-Royce Corp.'s AE 3007 jet engine, the company said April 13. Rolls-Royce will handle bearing repair sales, but Timken will perform repair services at its Lebanon, N.H., facility, an FAA-approved repair station. Timken Aerospace is the first outside supplier of repair services for Rolls-Royce in North America, the company said. The company already repairs Rolls-Royce RB211 engines at its facility in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, Timken said.
Boeing Co. followed the intent of congressional law in its strategy to provide new tanker aircraft to the U.S. Air Force, officials told The DAILY in a continuing defense of the deal. "The intent of Congress was that the Air Force and Boeing work together using widely accepted commercial practices to find a way to deliver 100 tanker aircraft to the warfighter far sooner than traditional non-commercial DOD practices allow," Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, said of the lease-buy arrangement for KC-767A tankers.
THE BOEING CO. of Houston will continue payload integration work for the International Space Station under a NASA contract extension worth $70 million. NASA plans to exercise the fiscal year 2005 option, the aerospace agency said, bringing the total value of the International Space Station Payload Integration Contract (IPIC) to $203.7 million. Work covered under the extension will continue through September 2005.
The Defense Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio, was able to find newly designed ball joints for the U.S. Army's most-used military vehicle, solving a problem of the parts wearing out too quickly. The two upper ball joints were causing logistical problems and were identified as a high-priority part for service's 78,000 Humvees being used around the world. Design problems, coupled with a limited number of suppliers, made it difficult to meet the requirement of replacing them after 12,000 miles of use.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency believes a brief drop in power in part of an interceptor missile caused a recent test failure for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, according to information MDA has submitted to Congress.
BETTER DOCKING: Michigan Aerospace Corp. will refine its docking system for spacecraft under a one-year, $220,000 contract from Microcosm Inc., the company said. The contract is part of a larger grant from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. Prototypes of the docking system have been ground-tested at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Ala., and on the Johnson Space Center's KC-135 microgravity-producing aircraft. Refinements to the mechanism will be made as a result of these tests, the company said.
Within the next few months, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) plans to follow a number of legislative issues, including those regarding acquisition policy, tax bills and "Buy American" legislation, according to Jonathan Etherton, AIA's vice president of legislative affairs. AIA is concerned with commercial product acquisition policies and contractor ethics as they relate to situations like the Boeing tanker lease-buy deal, Etherton told The DAILY.
The U.S. Army is nearly finished upgrading its fleet of CH-47 Chinook helicopters to make them more resistant to missile attacks from the ground, according to Lt. Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has received more than 20 ideas for involving allied countries in MDA's new Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program, according to Defense Department officials.
The U.S. Army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF) has been moving some of the military's newest, most advanced technologies into the war theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing U.S. troops with the ability to stay a step ahead of emerging threats, according to an REF official.
NASA is embracing the recommendations of a report on how the agency can transform its culture and make employees less fearful to speak out on safety issues, according to Administrator Sean O'Keefe.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Industry officials say they expect the U.S. Air Force this week to release the formal RFP for the Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) system of the E-10A Multi-sensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A).
The use of space systems for military operations has grown considerably over the past decade and shows no signs of slowing in the coming decade, according to a new report from a research group. Over the next 10 years, 113 dedicated military satellites with an estimated value of $42 billion will be produced, according to the Forecast International report, "Western Military Satellites: 2004-2013."
The U.S. Army intends to convene a high-level meeting in Colorado this week to kick off development of a blueprint for the service's directed energy (DE) programs. About 85 leaders of Army organizations are expected to gather for the April 13-14 summit, which is to begin crafting a "strategic plan" that will set research priorities for lasers and other DE weapons, according to the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), the event's organizer.
NASA's Genesis spacecraft has ended its collection of solar wind particles, the aerospace agency said. The spacecraft has exposed its collector arrays of sapphire, silicon, gold and diamond to the solar wind since October 2001, but ended that collection earlier this month when the Genesis team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., ordered the collectors deactivated and stowed.
SUPERBIRD READY: The Boeing Co. said the Superbird-6 satellite it built for Japan's Space Communication Corp. (SCC) is ready for its April 15 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla. The satellite, the third spacecraft Boeing Satellite Systems has built for SCC, will be used to meet the "strong demand" for business telecommunications services in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, Boeing said. Superbird-6 carries 23 Ku-band and four Ka-band transponders.
AUSTRALIAN SALE: ADI Ltd. of Australia has delivered the final six of 40 interim high mobility engineering excavator vehicles (IHMEEs) it has designed and built for the U.S. Army, the company said. The IHMEEs is a "breakthrough vehicle" because it is the first Australian-built military vehicle to be bought in volume by the U.S., and the deal has "created further export opportunities with the U.S.," Lucio Di Bartolomeo, ADI's managing director, said in a statement.
General Electric and Volvo Aero have signed an agreement to increase Volvo Aero's stake in the LM2500 industrial gas turbine, an engine primarily used for marine and industrial applications. Volvo Aero has been producing the 3-9 spool for the high-pressure compressor in the LM2500 for several years. The additional contract applies to compressor discs for the same gas turbine, according to a joint statement from the two companies.
