NASA'S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY has awarded $300,000 contracts to the Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and TRW for six-month studies of concepts for a Mars Ascent Vehicle. The vehicle would lift surface samples gathered by the Mars Sample Return mission, slated for 2011 at the earliest.
MISSILE CAUTION: Three influential House Democrats are urging the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization to hold off on plans to begin building a missile defense test bed at Ft. Greely, Alaska, in August. In a July 27 letter to Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the director of BMDO, House Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Ike Skelton (Mo.), senior committee member John Spratt (S.C.) and House Appropriations defense subcommittee member Norm Dicks (Wash.) say that fiscal 2001 military construction funding that the Defense Department intends to use at Ft.
SPECTRUM ASTRO of Gilbert, Ariz., will develop spacecraft network hardware called Space Network Devices (SND) for the NASA Glenn Research Center under a $960,000 contract, the company announced. The SND contract is part of the High Rate Data Delivery (HRDD) area of NASA's Cross-Enterprise Technology Development Program. The HRDD program is aimed at facilitating communication and information technology to enable a high rate of delivery of data between space and the ground.
GLOBAL HAWK HOME: The Air Force says it has officially selected Beale Air Force Base, Marysville, Md., as the main operating base for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) now that the program has received an environmental impact assessment saying it will have no significant impact. The final selection is not a surprise - Beale was named in January as the preferred base (DAILY, Jan. 19). The selection was based on a number of factors including climate, runway space, air traffic in the base's air space and base facilities.
Corporate reshuffling stretched Lockheed Martin's second quarter earnings and cash flow, slightly improving the contractor's razor-thin profit margins even as sales and orders slipped. Lockheed Martin posted a $144 million net income for the quarter, more than triple last year's quarterly profits yet still a miniscule, 2.4 percent share of sales of $6 billion, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
THE ADVOCATE: The U.S. Department of Commerce will continue its "advocacy campaigns" on behalf of U.S. aerospace exporters to counter European government assistance to aerospace companies, says Grant Aldonas, under secretary of commerce for international trade. Aldonas, who testifyied July 26 before the aviation subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, says European governments have had a direct financial interest in the economic well-being of European aerospace firms.
DON'T CHANGE SLI: The recently formed National Coalition of Spaceport States (NCSS), which is dedicated to furthering the development of a nationwide infrastructure of spaceports and space operations, believes NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) shouldn't be changed by Congress. "We concluded that Congress was very wise in their passage of SLI, and SLI does represent a positive move by NASA in space commercialization," says NCSS Chairman Tim Huddleston.
ASTRIUM GMBH developed a research facility that was used aboard the International Space Station for the first time, the Bremen, Germany-based company announced. Astrium's Compact Protein Crystallization Facility (CPCF) was returned to Earth by the Space Shuttle Atlantis last week. Astrium has handed over the experiment's material samples to researchers. "This project shows that even in the initial stages the International Space Station is successfully used as a research center," said Josef Kind, head of the company's space infrastructure business division.
PDQ QDR: With the September 30 deadline for completion of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) approaching, defense analyst Michelle Flournoy thinks the Defense Department may not have left itself enough time to perform a credible analysis of military force requirements.
MOON BUY: Advocates of returning to the moon have called for NASA to establish a program to buy lunar data from commercial companies. "...NASA can open the door to commercial lunar development if they will implement this data purchase program to encourage the gathering of much-needed data from the moon," says Rick Tumlinson, president of the Space Frontier Foundation. Lunar exploration advocates made the call for the program at a recent conference in Las Vegas.
THE BOEING CO. may lay off 85 employees at Kennedy Space Center due to a decrease in the planned workload there caused by the International Space Station program's transition from a development to an operational program. The job shift involves the Payload Ground Operations Contract (PGOC) and the ISS programs that support Boeing's Human Space Flight and Exploration effort.
Range safety officials destroyed a Peacekeeper ICBM shortly after launch early July 27 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The missile was on a test mission to carry nine unarmed re-entry vehicles about 4,800 miles to a pre-determined target at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It was destroyed at 1:04 a.m. Pacific time when it "failed to perform as expected," the Air Force said. "The cause of the anomaly is unknown at this time and is being investigated." The test was part of a program to verify the accuracy and reliability of the Peacekeeper force.
Aerospace industry experts say an aging engineer workforce - and a shortage of young skilled engineers - may pose the greatest challenge for the U.S. aerospace industry. John Douglass, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, testified on the issue before a House Transportation and Infrastructure panel on July 26 and said the number of aerospace engineers has dropped dramatically since the mid-1980s.
The Department of Defense made $615 million worth of illegal or improper accounting adjustments in fiscal year 2000 to help pay its bills, according to a General Accounting Office report released July 26. "The $615 million of adjustments we identified in this report as illegal or otherwise improper must be immediately reversed," the report says. "Furthermore, at a minimum, DOD will need to effect changes to its systems, policies, procedures and the overall weak control environment that fostered these practices and served to perpetuate this problem."
The PJ 10, an anti-ship missile jointly developed by India and Russia, is expected to enter production within three years, Indian defense minister Jaswant Singh has informed members of the Indian Parliament. The Indian Navy has identified a number of platforms for inducting the missile, which is intended to have a range of 280 kilometers, a speed of Mach 2.8 and high accuracy.
NASA has selected four teams to participate in the new five-year, $69 million Small Aircraft Transportation (SATS) research and development program, the space agency announced. SATS is intended to combine "smart" airplanes and "smart" airports to make small aircraft easier and safer to fly, to allow greater use of the nation's 5,000 small airports and to make flying more accessible to residents of small towns, rural areas and suburbs (DAILY, April 18).
Recent top-level Department of Defense meetings to revise the military's "terms of reference" document may show both problems in the strategic review process as well as a lack of imagination concerning future capabilities, according to some defense analysts. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been revising the classified strategy document, in an effort to clear up ambiguities about force structure requirements, as the deadline for the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) draws closer.
Five House members have asked House Armed Services Committee Chairman Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) to provide an additional $40 million in the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill to speed up fatigue-related wing replacements for the U.S. Navy's EA-6B Prowlers. According to the July 23 letter, signed by Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), the money would be used to buy eight more wing center sections for the radar-jamming aircraft.
The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) of the Indian Ministry of Defence has signed a $3.2-million agreement with Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC) of Needham, Mass., to market its design software Autolay. The ADA, which developed the software primarily for the design of India's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), has already lined up one big customer: Autolay will be used to design and develop Airbus Industrie's superjumbo A380. Software exported from India
One idea being considered by the U.S. Air Force as it plans for replacement of its fleet of QF-4 aerial targets is letting industry handle the job of operating targets.
The biggest chunk of the Air Force's $41.3 million research, development, test and evaluation request for the Electronic Warfare Development program in fiscal 2002 is $34.9 million for the RF Towed Decoy program.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, plans to propose that the U.S. and Israel begin joint development of a boost-phase missile defense system, the congressman announced July 26. At a Capitol Hill briefing with Israeli Minister of Public Security Uzi Landau, Weldon revealed that he intends to send a letter to his congressional colleagues and the Bush Administration seeking their support to start work on such a program.
Russia has asked that a South African Internet tycoon be the second "space tourist" to visit the International Space Station, ISS program manager Tommy Holloway said July 26. Holloway said Russia asked the station's Multilateral Control Board to approve Mark Shuttleworth for flight next April. Shuttleworth, 27, has been training at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center, according to press reports. "That is being taken under consideration," Holloway said.
The House Armed Services Committee's procurement and research and development subcommittees will mark up the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill on July 31, the committee announced. The full committee will consider the bill Aug. 1. The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to consider its version of the bill in September.
The Federal Aviation Administration on July 26 ordered operators of aircraft powered by Pratt&Whitney PW4000 engines to remove and rebuild them within a certain period of time. The order impacts nearly 500 engines on 747s, 767s, MD-11s and Airbus A300s and A310s in the U.S. fleet, Aerospace Daily affiliate Aviation Daily reported. FAA estimated the cost of removing and replacing the engines at $2 million.
