Days after revealing possible underground seas on the moon Enceladus, NASA’s Cassini Saturn probe has discovered evidence pointing to the existence of a subsurface ocean of water and ammonia on Titan. The discovery was made by collating measurements of Titan’s rotation obtained by Cassini’s synthetic aperture radar during 19 passes over Titan between October 2005 and May 2007. Scientists inferred that a 30-km. shift in the expected positions of prominent surface features over the period could only be explained by the existence of an ocean under the moon’s icy crust.
Northrop Grumman has proposed a demonstration to the U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in which U.S. military users would be able to tap Israel’s new TecSar/Polaris 1 imaging radar satellite for a period this summer. Under the proposal, U.S. users would submit imagery requests that would then be sent through the Israeli ground station in Tel Aviv.
Astronauts on board the International Space Station can count on a new means of resupply following the docking of Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle last week.
Carl R. Smith (see photo) has been named vice president-infrared countermeasures for the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Defensive Systems Div., Rolling Meadows, Ill. He was vice president-engineering and manufacturing.
Don’t expect the Air Force to move out on a bomber beyond the one it hopes to put into service in 2018. There has been talk that the “future bomber” now in the works might be a mere interim step on the way to a true next-generation platform. “There’s no future bomber beyond that,” says a senior Air Force general overseeing requirements for the design. On the other hand, the “2018 [effort ] is a real program with real hardware and software milestones.
Avionics integration promises to be one of the biggest hurdles in the next few months as Eurocopter and its Chinese partners try to achieve first flight on their EC175 helicopter venture in late 2009. Major supplier selections are now being wrapped up for the 16-passenger rotorcraft, and all major long-lead items are in production. Joseph Saporito, head of commercial programs at Eurocopter, says the EC175 project is on schedule, and the structural work being performed by the Chinese partners is advancing particularly well.
Final assembly begins in Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory for the first U.S. Navy P-8A patrol aircraft, as its 737 derivative fuselage is lowered into place. The Poseidon fuselage was built by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., using a Boeing digital construction system that was pioneered on Australia’s Wedgetail AEWC program, which also uses a 737 airframe derivative. Changes to the airliner design are built in digitally so no reconstruction is required once the fuselage leaves the assembly line.
James R. Waddington, Jr., who is director of operations for Lockheed Martin Mission and Combat Support Systems, has been elected chairman of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia .
Japan has completed its ballistic missile defense system for the Tokyo region, with the final battery of Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles installed at the Kasumigaura Ground Self-Defense Force base in Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of the capital, on Mar. 29.
An aerospace and defense government-industry cooperative is using Exostar to provide common standards for the international exchange of sensitive electronic information by industry and governments.
Three months after Boeing tasked Orion Propulsion Inc. (OPI) to work on producibility issues for the reaction control system (RCS) for the Ares I launcher, the two companies signed a NASA-sponsored Mentor-Protege agreement at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The accord will make OPI—a small engineering and testing specialist from Madison, a Huntsville suburb—more visible in the Boeing supply chain and open the door for it to move into RCS hardware work, says OPI business development director Shar Hendrick.
U.K. investigators continue to seek clues to the Mar. 30 crash of a Cessna Citation Model 500 (Citation I), registration VP-BGE, into a residential neighborhood near Farnborough, Kent, England. Early reports indicate the five people on board were killed, and no one on the ground was injured or killed. The U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is leading the probe, aided by the U.S. NTSB, FAA, aircraft manufacturer Cessna Aircraft Co. and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney Canada.
Faina Zaslavsky (see photo) has been named director of the Microelectronics Solutions unit of Crane Aerospace & Electronics , Redmond, Wash. She has been a senior process engineer. Honors and Elections
The first flight of the Kawasaki C-X military transport has been delayed again, this time until summer, because of newly found defects. The C-X, which was supposed to fly in September 2007, failed static structural tests last July. Now it has been decided that strengthening is needed for the mid and aft fuselage sections, where the landing gear is attached, and for the rear cargo ramp, the Defense Ministry says.
As the space-industrial complex spins up its pitch for more funding from the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (see p. 34), oddsmakers at the 24th National Space Symposium see New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as the strongest space supporter in the three-way presidential race as it stands today. Illinois Sen. Barak Obama’s support for civil space is considered weakest, given his early call for diversion of NASA funding into education and subsequent lack of specifics on his position. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen.
South Korea will develop a ground-surveillance radar for a large medium-altitude drone to be fielded as early as 2013, aiming to build the aircraft with almost completely domestic technology. Coupled with indigenous electro-optical and infrared sensors, the Korean radar should make the surveillance drone a viable option if the country cannot buy the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, which will not be allowed unless the international Missile Technology Control Regime is changed.
As the Pentagon studies what its military satellite communications architecture will be in light of dwindling funding, engineers at Lockheed Martin are preparing the first new-generation anti-jam military communications satellite for launch early next year. The initial Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite will mark a dramatic change in the capacity of secure communications available to Pentagon users between 65 deg. N and 65 deg. S latitudes. It’s expected to be launched on an Atlas V next January.
Lockheed Martin has completed the last satellite in the U.S. Air Force’s GPS Block IIR modernization program (GPS IIR-M), including a demonstration payload to transmit the new L5 civil signal. The last spacecraft is scheduled for shipment from King of Prussia, Pa., to Cape Canaveral in time for a June launch.
Army Gen. David Petraeus says the Iraqis are getting a bit of a bad rap in the criticism that they are letting the U.S. shoulder all the costs of security needs. So far this year, the Iraqi government has purchased over $2 billion in military equipment and services of U.S. origin under the Foreign Military Sales program. The U.S. commander in Iraq tells Congress Iraq’s security ministries “are steadily improving their ability to execute their budgets,” with $8 billion to be spent this year and $11 billion planned for next year.
The U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) has tested a General Electric F101 engine burning a 50/50 blend of synthetic and petroleum-based fuels in the center’s J-1 altitude chamber. The experiments are the first to check performance and operability across a wide envelope of altitude and Mach numbers, according to AEDC. The synthetic fuel is derived from natural gas or coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process. A B-1B Lancer flew at supersonic speed on Mar.
Capt. Terry McVenes (Executive Air Safety Chairman)
Your editorial “Don’t Let Courts Trump Safety” hit the mark when you pointed out that the judge’s decision to release the ASAP reports from Comair Flight 5191 endangers the entire program. The incentive for flight crews and other employees to submit ASAP reports is largely based on trust that the information will not be used in enforcement, disciplinary or legal proceedings.
Astronomers are analyzing a brilliant gamma-ray burst that took place an estimated 7.5 billion years ago, yet was so bright it could have been seen with the naked eye. “This burst was a whopper,” says Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, principal investigator on the Swift satellite that first spotted it. “It blows away every gamma-ray burst we’ve seen so far.” The Burst Alert Telescope on Swift detected the blast in the constellation Bootes at 2:12 a.m. EDT Mar.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is likely to approve the proposed $5-billion merger of satellite-radio providers XM Radio and Sirius within the next few weeks, following the Mar. 25 Justice Dept. approval of the deal. “Battles over merger conditions will likely take at least a few weeks to play out,” says Stanford Group Analyst Paul Gallant. Bear Stearns’ vice president of equity research, John Vreeland, notes that both XM and Sirius believe the FCC decision will follow closely behind the Justice Dept.
