The focus of debate over rechartering the U.S. Export-Import Bank has turned to the Senate this month. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) are pushing a proposal to extend the bank another five years, but only if existing restrictions on supporting coal-fired power plants overseas are lifted.
Like a bad wedding gift that cannot be offloaded, the FAA indicated last week it is investigating whether a photographer’s UAV-borne video of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s recent nuptials violated current restrictions on unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace. Maloney, an upstate New York Democrat, is a minority member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure aviation subcommittee that oversees the FAA.
Last week saw a slew of defense-related developments on Capitol Hill. While none of them alone was definitive for military programs, they continue to weave a narrative of tougher decisions to come over the defense budget starting next year and beyond. That is because Senate appropriators put their imprimatur on fiscal 2015 defense spending plans that—like other key legislative branch defense committees—overwhelmingly rebuffs the Pentagon’s first hard proposals to meet congressionally mandated sequestration-level spending caps.
The delayed and controversial request for proposals (RFP) in the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (Uclass) air vehicle competition should be out “within a couple of weeks,” Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the service’s program executive officer for unmanned aircraft and strike systems, said at the Farnborough air show on July 14. The Navy is in the final stages of dialogue with senior Pentagon leadership regarding the specifications in the RFP.
Airbus marked its best Farnborough air show ever in terms of new business, trumping Boeing by announcing 496 orders and commitments valued at $75 billion compared to the U.S. airframer’s tally of 106 orders and 95 commitments. Despite picking up 50 additional firm orders for the 777X, Boeing’s total of 201 is valued at just over half that for Airbus. Its bonanza included orders for more than 300 A320/A321neos and was boosted by the launch of the A330neo on the back of 121 orders and commitments.
Engineers have installed a surplus space shuttle main engine on Test Stand A-1 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, preparing for ground tests of the old reusable engine and its new controller as the throw-away main-stage propulsion system for the planned heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). “This test series is a major milestone because it will be our first opportunity to operate the engine with a new controller and to test propellant inlet conditions for SLS that are different than the space shuttle,” says Steve Wofford, SLS liquid engines element manager.
Airbus Defense and Space plans to design and build a telecom satellite for Luxembourg-based fleet operator SES that will use electric propulsion for initial orbit-raising and all on-orbit maneuvers when it launches in 2017. Based on the Eurostar E3000 spacecraft bus in an all-new Electric Orbit Raising configuration, SES-12 is to be the most powerful satellite ever built for SES. Airbus says using all-electric propulsion will mean the satellite will take 3-6 months to reach its final operating position at 95 deg.
NASA will spend $25 million on instruments development for an unmanned mission to Europa, the moon of Jupiter where scientists believe a liquid-water ocean lies beneath the frozen surface. The agency plans to select about 20 proposals in April 2015, and provide about $25 million to those selected for Phase A concept studies, to include advancing instrument formulation and development.
Commercial launch services provider Arianespace will orbit the second Sentinel-1 radar satellite built for Europe’s flagship Copernicus Earth-observation program atop a Soyuz rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, in 2016. Jointly funded by the EU and the European Space Agency, the Sentinel-1B is a C-band Earth-observation satellite equipped with a synthetic aperture radar instrument.
In-space testing of a U.S.-developed “green” hydrazine replacement as a propellant for spacecraft thrusters is a step closer, with the completion of hot-fire testing at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond, Washington, facility. Designated AF-M315E, the propellant is destined for the Green Propellant Infusion Mission, which will carry four 1N thrusters like the one tested in Redmond, and one 22N thruster. A flightlike version of that unit is scheduled for testing later this year.
Coming on the heels of previous financial struggles and the disappearance of MH370 in March, the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine late last week was adding to doubts about the airline’s grim prospects of survival (see page 42). For the latest on the crash, go to AviationWeek.com/MH17.
The winners of the 2014 Top-Performing Companies (TPC) rankings were honored at the Farnborough air show last week during a ceremony at Aviation Week’s chalet. The annual study, whose results were published in May, evaluated and ranked the operational performance of 59 publicly traded aerospace and defense companies worldwide.
Aviation Week’s team took home five of the 10 awards at the 2014 Aerospace Media Awards dinner in London last week. Aviation Week won the awards for Best Defense Publication, Best International Publication and Best Integrated Social Media. In addition, Senior Defense Editors Amy Butler and Bill Sweetman won the Best In-Depth Feature honor for their revelation last December of the classified U.S.
New space companies will take prominent roles in the first phase of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (Darpa) XS-1 experimental spaceplane program. Masten Space Systems, teamed with XCOR Aerospace, has won one of three contracts to design a demonstrator for a reusable launch-vehicle first stage. Blue Origin is part of the Boeing team while Northrop Grumman is working with Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.
