Launch of the comet rendezvous spacecraft Rosetta will be delayed by several days as an inquiry board continues to investigate the failure of Arianespace's heavier-lift Ariane 5, the company said Dec. 30. A board, named by Arianespace, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French space agency CNES, is to submit its report to Arianespace on Jan. 6.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) plans to appeal a federal court's recent decision to dismiss his lawsuit challenging the Bush Administration's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to a spokesman for the congressman. Kucinich, who filed the suit with 31 other House members, intends to begin forming his appeal strategy when the new congressional session begins the week of Jan. 6-10, his spokesman said Jan. 2. Kucinich could file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Poland's decision to buy 48 F-16 Fighting Falcons likely will have the greatest effect on Gripen Inter-national, the maker of the JAS-39 Gripen fighter, according to a U.S. aerospace and defense analyst. Poland opted on Dec. 27 to buy 48 Lockheed Martin Block 52 F-16C/Ds instead of the Gripen, made by the BAE Systems/Saab Gripen International consortium, or Dassault Aviation's Mirage 2000-5 MK 2. The total value of the contract is estimated at $3.5 billion. Poland is expected to receive $9.8 billion in offset arrangements as part of the deal.
Israeli government officials have been talking to officials of the U.S. government about using an Israeli system on U.S. airlines to deflect heat-seeking missiles, sources said. The discussions, spurred by a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner with such missiles as it departed Mombasa, Kenya, on Nov. 28, are said to have centered on the Flight Guard system, which already is installed on 150 airplanes, some of them commercial aircraft.
SUPPLY: EMS Technologies will supply switch technology for signal routing to Alcatel Space for the SAR-Lupe imaging satellite mission, the company said Jan. 2. The work will be done under a $2.5 million contract. SAR-Lupe is a planned constellation of five satellites for space-based reconnaissance, set for launch in 2005-2007.
DDG 105: The U.S. Navy will provide about $400 million each for DDG 105 and DDG 106, new DDG 51-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers, according to the shipbuilders. Northrop Grumman's Ship Systems sector will get $401.5 million for building the DDG 105, and General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works will get $409 million for the DDG 106, the companies said Jan. 2. The money is part of previously awarded multiyear contracts.
Army and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) officials are to decide in mid-May whether the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program will move forward into the system development and demonstration phase. The LSI team hopes to begin awarding development contracts soon after the Army and DARPA give the approval to move forward, said Jerry McElwee, Boeing's program manager for the FCS program.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A study of a follow-on ICBM will begin in 2003 or 2004 and all basing modes will be considered, according to Brig. Gen. William L. Shelton, director of plans and programs for Air Force Space Command headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base here. "We will begin an analysis of alternatives within the next year or two to determine what the follow-on ICBM should look like," Shelton told The DAILY.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's transformation agenda enters its third year poised for a new focus on implementing the broad budgetary and strategic reforms imposed since 2001, according to defense officials and analysts. By the end of 2002, the goals of the Army, Navy and Air Force seemed to draw closer to the transformation vision pushed by Rumsfeld's civilian leadership team. The latest round of budget negotiations indicates a clear shift in thinking, said Loren Thompson, executive director of the Lexington Institute.
Monday, December 16, 2002 NAVY Raytheon Electronic Systems, El Segundo, Calif., is receiving an $18,350,000 firm-fixed-price order under previously awarded contract (N00383-01-G-100A) for purchase of AN/APG-73 radar receivers used on the F/A-18 aircraft. Work will be performed at El Segundo, Calif., and is to be completed by December 2004. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Inventory Control Point, Philadelphia is the contracting activity. ARMY
The process for reviewing export licenses to sell dual-use and munitions items overseas, especially to European allies, likely will come under closer scrutiny next year, according to Joel Johnson, vice president of International Affairs for the Aerospace Industries Association. Johnson said the commerce, state and defense departments have made great progress over the past 18 months in clarifying which items should be on the State Department's Munitions List and which should be included on the Commerce Department's Control List.
The year ahead promises fewer moments of the high suspense that dominated 2002 for several of the Pentagon's highest-profile aerospace programs, but a handful of critical events are in store over the next 12 months. It was only a year ago that three blockbuster aerospace programs appeared to have an uncertain future. Make-or-break events were on the calendar for the RAH-66 Comanche, V-22 Osprey what was then called the F-22 Raptor.
As the Department of Defense (DOD) prepares to double spending on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) next year, officials warn that UAVs could become the victims of their own popularity if new capabilities are piled on without regard to affordability. "There's lots of stuff that UAVs can do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all of those things are cost effective," said Diane Wright, deputy director for air warfare at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). "We need to figure out how to balance that out."
Analysts and NASA officials agree that 2003 will be a crucial year for the agency as it enters the most difficult period of space station construction and continues its push to re-establish financial credibility in the eyes of Congress. "The year ahead will be the most complex so far in the history of the International Space Station [ISS] and its construction in orbit," NASA Station Program Manager Bill Gerstenmaier said in a statement. "The station literally becomes a new spacecraft with each assembly mission."
MOSCOW - Workers are finishing repairs to Building 112 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which was heavily damaged when its roof collapsed in May, killing eight (DAILY, May 14, 2002). Clean rooms used by contractor Starsem should be ready for use by mid-February, when the European Space Agency's Mars Express is slated to arrive for preparation for its May or June launch. A government commission said overloading the roof with more than 10 tons of new roofing material played a large role in the collapse. Launches
Congress faces no dearth of defense and NASA issues in 2003. When lawmakers reconvene in early January, they will have to make several key personnel decisions affecting aerospace programs. The chairmanships of the Senate Armed Services airland and seapower subcommittees and the House Science space subcommittee are up for grabs, and the House Armed Services Committee may revamp its subcommittee structure to make it more like that of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
FIRST FLIGHT: The first C-5 Galaxy modified under the C-5 Avionics Modernization Program made its first flight Dec. 21, ahead of its planned February first-flight date, Lockheed Martin said Dec. 23.
NEW DELHI - The head of the Indian air force (IAF) said human error is largely to blame for the large number of MiG aircraft crashes here in recent years. Air Chief Marshal Sriniwaspuram Krishnaswamy said Dec. 20 that MiGs have a higher crash rate than other aircraft India has acquired because air force pilots train on MiG-21s because India lacks advanced jet trainers.
According to the scientists working on them, proposed missions to fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on Mars must go the extra mile to prove their scientific worth over longer-duration missions such as orbiters, landers, or rovers. The latest hopeful is NASA Langley Research Center's Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) mission, selected as one of four finalists in NASA's 2007 Mars Scout program (DAILY, Dec. 18).
Boeing on Dec. 20 revealed its next aircraft design, the unnamed "middle-market" aircraft, ending months of speculation about the reality of its Sonic Cruiser, Aerospace Daily affiliate Aviation Daily reported. Commercial Airplanes President Alan Mulally told journalists the new aircraft "reaffirms the strategy of point-to-point nonstop travel. ... The market is tremendous." Pressure is mounting on Airbus to respond to Boeing's shift from the Sonic Cruiser design to a more conventional, yet cost-efficient 250-passenger aircraft.
