An over-spinning sounding rocket is being blamed for disruption of a test of a device planned by Japan to penetrate the surface of the moon during a 1997 mission, but the overall program won't be seriously affected, according to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). The penetrator will be fired into the surface of the moon during the Lunar-A surveyor mission in the summer of 1997. It is designed to penetrate to a depth of about a meter, and then to measure vibrations of the lunar surface.
McDonnell Douglas on Friday completed the first flight of a pre- production AH-64D Longbow Apache, and moved closer to the beginning of a decade-long remanufacture of the U.S. Army's Apache fleet to the Longbow standard. The flight was conducted at MDC Helicopter System's in Mesa, Ariz., and lasted about 25 minutes. The prototype was remanufactured using the same components, processes and tooling that will be involved in the fleet overhaul slated to begin in mid-1996, MDC said.
It's fairly certain that the controversy over the National Reconnaissance Office's hoard of at least $1 billion in unspent appropriations will result in stronger financial oversight of the spy satellite agency. "I was responsible years ago for fighting very hard to get an inspector general out there at CIA; I think it's one of the best things I ever did," Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) of the Senate Intelligence Committee tells The DAILY. "Obviously we need to either expand that [IG] staff or make some other authority for reviewing some of the accounts out there."
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP.'S Magellan Systems subsidiary has received one of the marine industry's top innovation awards for its newly introduced GPS 3000, a hand-held satellite-based navigation product designed for marine applications. Orbital says that at $250, GPS 3000 "brings satellite navigation within the reach of every boater and sailor." Magellan was chosen for its award by a panel of judges from Boating Writers International.
Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), was quick to jump on Italy's difficulties in paying its share of the International Space Station program, declaring in a Sept. 27 House speech aimed at killing the project that "the Italians have dropped out of this program." Not so, House Science Committee Chairman Rep.
Russia has managed to launch an Earth-observing satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, despite a dispute with the local electric utility over unpaid bills that left an adjacent ICBM test site without electric power last month. Liftoff of a Soyuz-U booster carrying a Resurs F satellite last Tuesday came after the Arkhangelsk regional power grid cut the juice at the ICBM facility for 15 minutes (DAILY, Sept. 18, page 412B). The Resurs F was undergoing checkout at the time, and cosmodrome officials managed to persuade the utility not to disrupt the activity.
The Defense Dept.'s policy that software be written in Ada "will have to change," at least according to one official. "It's not supported in the commercial marketplace," and the time between new processors coming out and Ada compilers following suit is too long-"at least six months and possibly getting longer," says Navy Capt. Kathleen Paige, technical director for the Aegis program. "I don't think its a policy that can stand for many more years," she says at the COTS conference.
Congressional appropriators agreed to fund the Tier II Plus high altitude endurance UAV and provide $15 million for a Tier II Plus/Boost Phase Intercept program, says John Entzminger, HAE UAV program manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. He tells The DAILY that he still has to evaluate what that funding means. It could allow him to take one of the losing contractors further in the development phase. Teledyne Ryan beat out Loral, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Sciences and Raytheon.
ASHTECH, INC., Sunnyvale, Calif., and Philips Semiconductors, a U.S. branch of The Netherlands-based Philips Electronics NV, announced an agreement to jointly develop a two-chip Global Positioning System (GPS) chip set for cellular phones, car navigation units and other wireless technology applications. The chip set will provide users with GPS receiver function as well as an embedded controller to convert raw satellite data to a "navigation solution," Ashtech said. Philips will manufacture the chip sets.
LOCKHEED MARTIN's Martin Marietta Defense Systems unit, Pittsfield, Mass., will supply 367 Digital Electronic Control Assemblies in support of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System under a $7.9 million contract awarded Sept. 25 by the U.S. Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command.
AT&T TRIDOM, Marietta, Ga., has received a $3.5 million contract to upgrade satellite communications networks for American Farm Bureau affiliates in Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas using AT&T's Clearlink 400 very small aperture terminals (VSATs).
ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL CORP.'s Collins Avionics&Communications Div., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was awarded a $7.4 million sole source contract by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command for the Data Transfer System.
NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery arrived in Palmdale, Calif., late last week to begin a nine-month overhaul period to prepare it for assembly operations at the International Space Station, a process at least two more of the three Shuttles will undergo.
Ranking Senate Armed Services Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) has set this week for an announcement on whether he plans to seek re- election next year. Although most Nunn watchers expect him to announce his retirement, the senator, in typical fashion, has taken steps that could point in either direction.
ORBITAL IMAGING CORP., another Orbital Sciences subsidiary, has selected Satatlantic, Inc. of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the exclusive distributor of SeaStar data services in Canada. Scheduled for launch in the first half of 1996, the SeaStar satellite will provide Earth surface color imagery.
STORM INTEGRATION, Herndon, Va., has been selected to provide systems that will be utilized for integration and test, orbit analysis, and real-time on-orbit command-and control of the Indostar direct broadcast satellite. Indostar is being developed by CTA International, Rockville, Md., under a con-tract from PT. Media Citra Indostar of Indonesia.
Contractors, after several years of waiting for the final RFP for the close range, or Manuever, variant of the Joint Tactical unmanned aerial vehicle, may get some relief-at least in terms of the length of the document. Dwight Williams, deputy director of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, says the statement of work has been cut down from more than 700 pages to less than 12. Williams says Friday at a conference in Washington on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems that the RFP will be issued in less than eight weeks.
The Marine Corps needs tactical unmanned aerial vehicles in part because the Hunter UAVs, with its requirement for a runway, was "never fully satisfactory," Blot says. "Our real desire is to have a UAV which can land and take off vertically." At the same time, he says, the ground station and the sensors are more important than the airframe.
The House, fueled by its large conservative Republican freshman class, Friday overwhelmingly rejected the $243 billion fiscal 1996 defense appropriations conference report by a vote of 267-151. The practical effect was to put Defense Dept. funding under the fiscal 1996 continuing resolution, which would permit spending on any line item at 5% less than the average rate of operations supported by the House and Senate defense appropriations bills.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP., Baltimore, is in line for a 24-month contract from U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command for work on a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) neural network. CECOM said in a Sept. 19 Commerce Business Daily notice that the work will continue an effort already underway.
COMSAT CORP. has signed 11 leases with News Corp. for a total of 950 MHz of Ku-band satellite capacity to distribute direct-to-home programming throughout Latin America. The five-year lease, valued at more than $100 million, will be accommodated on the Intelsat VII-A satellite scheduled for launch later this year, Comsat said.
The Netherlands will buy 200 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) under an agreement signed Friday in The Hague. The missiles are being bought as foreign military sales items through the U.S. government at a cost of about $107 million and will be fitted on Dutch F-16 fighters (DAILY, Sept. 28, p. 483B). The Dutch missiles will be part of the U.S. Defense Dept.'s 1996 Lot 10 AMRAAM buy. AMRAAM manufacturers Hughes and Raytheon will compete for the Lot 10 split.
KOLLMORGEN CORP. investigate will the feasibility of incorporating a weapon control system in an up-armored HMMWV. U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command said in a Sept. 19 Commerce Business Daily notice that if that upon satisfactory completion of the effort, the company will proceed with the integration itself.
The U.S. should not try to emulate Japan's economic model, House Science Committee Chairman Robert Walker (R-Pa.) tells reporters. "The fact is that in the major areas in which we compete, and the things that we want to do to define the 21st century economy, we have been more successful in many of those areas than the Japanese have been," he says. "My concern about following the Japanese model is that the Japanese are not particularly a model that I think is in the long run successful."
Texas Instruments and Lockheed Martin unveiled the first production Javelin missile round and the associated Command Launch Unit in a ceremony Friday at Troy, Ala. The joint venture has received two production contracts for the anti- tank fire-and-forget infantry weapon. The first, for $204 million and awarded in June 1994, was for 703 missiles and 55 CLUs. The second, for $180.7 million and awarded in March 1995, was for an additional 872 Javelins and 97 CLUs, with deliveries to extend from October 1996 to September 1997.
