Senate lawmakers questioned NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on April 26 about unspent funds at the agency left over from previous fiscal years, which Griffin said were all slated to be spent on congressionally approved projects.
While Boeing posted overall growth for the first quarter of this year, revenues for its Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) business fell 6 percent to $7.2 billion, compared to $7.6 billion for the first quarter of 2005, the company announced April 26. Boeing attributed the decline to lower volume in proprietary and commercial satellite programs, launch delays due to the Delta rocket workers strike and the August 2005 sale of Rocketdyne.
Arianespace reported a 6.33 million euro pretax profit last year on revenues of 1.07 billion euros ($1.3 billion) - up 60 percent over the previous year - as its Ariane 5 heavy lift launcher finally moved into cruising gear. With this year's manifest showing six Ariane 5 missions - one more than last year - and three Soyuz launches, and prices continuing to firm, CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall expects to equal or surpass this showing in 2006.
Russian investigators have identified a blocked nozzle in the booster hydraulic pump as the likely culprit behind the Feb. 28 Proton launch failure that left the Arabsat 4A spacecraft stranded in the wrong orbit. Based on telemetry data, the investigation panel believes a foreign particle blocked the nozzle, which interrupted the supply of oxidizer to the engine and resulted in a premature shutdown (DAILY, March 2). Arabsat 4A was deliberately de-orbited last month.
Senate defense appropriators are poised to boost funding to outfit Air National Guard (ANG) F-15Cs with Active Electronically Scanned Array radar beyond the Defense Department's recent budget requests, Republican panel members said April 26.
The Senate voted April 26 to move $2 billion from the Bush administration's roughly $68 billion military supplemental request for spending on border security, including $600 million for Coast Guard acquisition and $790 million for recapitalizing the Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine (CBP A&M) division.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command officials expect to choose one winning team by mid-May for a seven-year, $450 million "FastTrack" program to find, engineer and replace increasingly obsolescent parts for aging legacy aircraft across the Defense Department, they told The DAILY. Contract award - which will be to one team led by a U.S. prime contractor - has been held up by a lack of contracting personnel, said Bob Ernst, head of Navair aging aircraft and the chairman of the DOD's Joint Council on Aging Aircraft.
Despite some hope that U.S. Air Force planners would refine their requirements for the new KC-X tanker, a much-anticipated request for information has actually broadened the range of options to include refurbishing old tankers and buying refueling by the hour from commercial vendors.
Some 200 "strategic thinkers" from a dozen nations, as well as from universities and commercial interests big and small, are meeting in Washington this week for a series of skull sessions aimed at developing a "global strategy" for human exploration of the lunar surface. The closed-door workshop hopes to begin identifying what strengths and requirements different nations and groups of nations might bring to exploring Earth's natural satellite, and how different national objectives could be melded into a broader cooperative effort.
Export controls, "Buy America" requirements and soaring health care costs will top the agenda when aerospace industry executives blitz Washington on April 26. About 60 representatives from aerospace companies are expected to head to Capitol Hill for more than two dozen meetings with lawmakers and congressional aides. The meetings, mostly with members of the House, were arranged by the Aerospace Industries Association as part of its annual Supplier Management Council meeting in nearby Arlington, Va.
HOUSE DIVIDED: Conservative House lawmakers and several right-leaning Washington think tank representatives on April 25 slammed the fiscal 2006 supplemental legislation moving through Congress. In particular, members of the House Republican Study Committee and their watchdog allies criticized the Senate, where appropriators already have added more than $14 billion over the House's $92 billion bill.
A U.S.-Canada strategic planning organization recommends that both countries take a continental approach to defense and homeland security, the group's leaders said April 24. The Bi-National Planning Group (BPG) made 62 recommendations overall, including calls for better intelligence and information sharing, as well as joint training and exercises.
The U.S. government plans to launch the standalone replacement satellite for Landsat by 2009 or 2010, while offering incentives to industry that might get the spacecraft up even sooner and reduce the chance of a data gap, according to an official with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). "The [request for proposals] is scheduled to be released in the third quarter of calendar year 2006," said OSTP's Gene Whitney during the Inside Aerospace symposium in Washington April 25. "There are incentives being offered for early launch."
The Air Force's top space procurement officer says that "fairly significant" advances in infrared sensor technology in the past decade justify the Pentagon's decision to initiate a new competition for a space-based early missile warning system.
DOD CPI: Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has committed to implementing continuous process improvement (CPI) across the Defense Department as an enterprise-wide approach. Services will get to keep savings realized.
BARTLETT'S BULLY PULPIT: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), chairman of the House Armed Services projection forces subcommittee, is continuing his effort to push the U.S. Navy toward greater use of nuclear power, as well as reduced ship staffing and even smaller aircraft carriers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's sole Predator B drone crashed early April 25 north of Nogales, Ariz., but the chief of Homeland Security Department's CBP Air and Marine division remains confident in the unmanned aircraft program, he told The DAILY and Aviation Week & Space Technology in an exclusive interview.
JSF ENGINE: The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has awarded United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney Military Engines unit a $120 million contract for low-rate initial Lot 1 procurement of five F-135 engines for the Air Force's Joint Strike Fighter F-35A conventional takeoff and landing variant. The engines will be built in East Hartford, Conn., and the contract should be finished in January 2010, the Defense Department announced April 20.
The U.S. space industry charges too much for the services it provides and must learn to do more with less, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said during a speech in Washington April 25. "We, the country, don't get enough back for what we spend" on space, Griffin told attendees of the Inside Aerospace symposium sponsored by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Space Foundation. "That means we don't get enough product for the amount of people's time invested in these activities. We have too many people doing every job we do."
