Planetary scientists hope the seven instruments NASA has competitively selected for its planned Mars 2020 rover will find evidence that life has existed on the red planet and maybe that it still does.
One of the better-kept training secrets in the Air National Guard is becoming harder to ignore—the Mississippi ANG’s Combat Readiness Training Center (CRTC) in and around Gulfport.
Aug. 21-22—Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Worldwide UAS Workshop. Daytona Beach, Florida. See proed.erau.edu or email [email protected]. Aug. 22—54th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Aerospace Medicine. Bangalore. www.isam.in Aug. 25—Ninth Asia-Pacific Congress of Aerospace Medicine. Beijing. www.apfama.org/2014
With mounting evidence that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian separatist rebels who believed that they were engaging a military aircraft, attention is focusing on the Russian-built Almaz-Antey Buk-M1 ground-based air defense system (Gbads) that destroyed the airliner.
T hough it was apparently a ground-based air defense system that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (see page 23), shorter-range man-portable air defense systems (Manpads) are still a top concern for the TSA. Administrator John Pistole lists the threat of Manpads to arriving and departing flights at foreign airports as among his top aviation security concerns. The U.S. has good control of airport perimeter security, but not all foreign airports have assessed the vulnerabilities of their airports, he says.
With attacks on Israel so intense that the FAA temporarily banned U.S. airline flights to Tel Aviv, the U.S. is looking to speed production of the Iron Dome system credited with protecting the Israeli populace from Hamas rocket strikes. Congress has already recommended doubling the administration’s $176 million request for Iron Dome, suggesting another $175 million to offset the costs of starting U.S. production of the system. Now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has asked Congress for still more funding: $225 million to produce components for the Rafael system.
It is all but certain that NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) will miss its first flight, scheduled for the end of 2017. NASA is 90% sure the 70-ton SLS will be delayed and thinks it will need $400 million to cover the estimated six-month slip.
NASA wants information on the possible use of privately owned spacecraft orbiting Mars to relay data back from future rovers as a commercial service. With its final planned scientific orbiter scheduled to reach Mars in September, the agency issued a request for information seeking ideas for private spacecraft that would collect data from unspecified future robotic missions to Mars and relay it back to Earth, perhaps with high-bandwidth laser communications links.
Taiwan is investigating the crash of a TransAsia Airways ATR 72 in weather that was bad but considered acceptable for the landing that the pilots were attempting. Of 58 people aboard, 48 died. The aircraft crashed short of the runway at Makong in the Penghu Islands at 7:30 p.m. local time July 23 after a flight from Kaohsiung. The pilots were making their second landing attempt. Although a typhoon had passed over Taiwan that day, weather reports showed that conditions on the Penghu Islands were quite suitable for landing, the Civil Aeronautics Administration told Reuters.
An MD-83 operating on behalf of Air Algerie crashed in Mali on July 24. Contact was lost 50 min. after takeoff from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and the aircraft went down around 70 km (44 mi.) from the city of Gao, according to Air Algerie. Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita told Reuters on July 24 that wreckage was spotted between the northern towns of Aguelhoc and Kidal.
An Ariane 5 ES rocket is scheduled to launch Europe’s fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-5) to the International Space Station July 29, after commercial launch services provider Arianespace performed additional checks on a subsystem inside the launcher’s Vehicle Equipment Bay (VEB). Previously slated to launch July 24, liftoff is now scheduled for 8:44:03 p.m. local time from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
Sweden has decided not to make a formal offer of the Saab JAS 39E/F Gripen to Denmark because Sweden believes its neighbor’s requirement is loaded in favor of the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. The Swedish FXM defense export agency announced on July 21 that it would not bid, leaving the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet in a contest against the F-35A. The decision follows “a comprehensive assessment that the state and the industry have made together,” according to FXM Director-General Ulf Hammarstrom.
India says the offer of Dassault Aviation for transfer of technology in the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) deal is fully compliant to the specified requirements and negotiations are progressing to finalize the purchase of 126 Rafale fighters. The Indian air force hopes the deal will be completed during the fiscal year that ends March 31. “If that happens, we will probably start receiving the aircraft from late 2016 or early 2017,” says an air force official. For MMRCA, the defense ministry has been in contract negotiations with Dassault for about 20 months.
