ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP., of Dulles, Va., said its BSAT-2b, the second of three geostationary satellites the company plans to deliver to customers in 2001, has been shipped to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. From Kourou, the satellite will be launched in July aboard an Ariane 5 rocket into a geosynchronous orbit at 110 degrees East longitude. The BSAT-2b is the second spacecraft built by Orbital for Japan's Broadcasting Satellite System Corp. and will serve as an in-orbit spare designed to deliver direct-to-home digital television broadcasting throughout Japan.
The Bush Administration plans to send Congress a fiscal 2002 budget amendment that calls for $18.4 billion in additional defense spending, a congressional aide told The DAILY late June 22. The amount is significantly less than the $20 billion to $30 billion plus-up to the original FY '02 budget submission that many observers had expected. "It's less than the Pentagon wanted by a longshot," the aide said.
(Editor's note: The following is excerpted testimony from the responses by Michael W. Wynne, nominated to be the Department of Defense's under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology, to written questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. Wynne testified June 22.) Q: In your view, what are the major challenges that will confront the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology?
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS (ATK) has been awarded a basic contract with options totaling a potential $11 million from McDonnell Douglas Corp., a subsidiary of the Boeing Co., to study technology concepts for a composite cryogenic fuel tank that could be used on a next-generation reusable launch vehicle (RLV) under development by NASA in the first phase of the Space Launch Initiative. SLI is a program aimed at developing technologies for a new RLV that could cut the cost of access to space.
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS of New York City announced its Space and Navigation division has developed a new family of low-cost, high-reliability wheels designed to stablize and control the next generation of satellites. Designated the MARS Series, the family of wheels is radiation hardened with a 15-year life expectancy, and can address both reaction wheel and momentum wheel missions. MARS qualification testing will be complete by the first quarter of 2002.
INTEGRAL SYSTEMS of Lanham, Md., has been awarded a contract by Loral Skynet to provide the primary and backup control software for the Telstar 8 satellite. The contract also requires Integral to provide software responsible for autonomous operations for the planning and execution of daily ion propulsion maneuvers. Telstar 8 will be the first of Space Systems/Loral's new model 1300 series of satellites. This will be the seventh Telstar satellite operated with Integral's Epoch 2000 satellite control products.
C-130 CONVERGENCE: Robertson is working on plans to streamline the diverse C-130 fleet. "C-130 is ... getting old," he says. "We've got 20 different models scattered across eight different major commands. When you deploy C-130s you have to deploy a different maintenance package for every different model of airplane you send. And we have concluded that it's not impossible to bring those different models of airplanes together into a single model - we call it the C-130X.
THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY has awarded the largest contract in European space astronomy history for the manufacture of two ESA astronomy satellites. The contract, valued at 369 million euros ($317 million USD), went to prime contractor Alcatel Space of France. Astrium GmbH of Germany and Alenia Spazio of Italy are part of the satellite consortium.
FUNDING BOOST? Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.) is considering proposing an amendment to increase defense spending in the fiscal 2001 supplemental appropriations bill by up to $1.45 billion, according to a congressional aide. The $6.5 billion bill now includes $5.5 billion for defense. The additional money would be for operation and maintenance (O&M) and personnel costs, since Bond believes they are underfunded in the supplemental. It's possible some of the extra O&M money would be used to alleviate shortages of aviation spare parts, the aide says.
An attempt by the unmanned Helios solar-powered aircraft to reach 100,000 feet, possibly by late July, will help prepare for the day when such vehicles will fly routinely in civil airspace.
DON'T MESS WITH C-17: Gen. Charles T. Robertson, commander in chief of U.S. Transportation Command, explains why modifying the C-17 to give it more cargo room would be a mistake. "The flexibility of the C-17 is one of its greatest attributes - that is, its ability to land on short runways," Robertson says. "We can park eight C-17s on the same ramp we can park three C-5s.
The future of trans-Atlantic defense mergers appears shaky in the short term following the decision of the European Commission to block the proposed GE-Honeywell merger, several defense analysts said. Not only will U.S. defense companies be more cautious about merging with their European counterparts, but U.S. regulators may scrutinize the activities of European defense companies in the U.S. more closely than normal, some analysts said.
JOINTNESS AT THE TOP: Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England believes that all three service secretaries will be engaging in "more and more joint programs in support of each other's programs, and not necessarily just holding onto our own programs. You will see, I believe, a real team operating here in the DoD where the three secretaries will speak as one for the DoD and the nation." England and the other two secretaries will be meeting regularly with each other on two new executive management boards just formed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (DAILY, June 19).
SPACE POST: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he decided againstappointing an under secretary of defense for space, intelligence and information (DAILY, May 10) to avoid creating "more superstructure" at the Defense Department, even though the congressionally mandated Space Commission, which he chaired, recommended that such a position be created to give national security space issues a higher profile (DAILY, Jan. 12). "The importance of space merits the under secretary," Rumsfeld says.
MARS SPRINT: Mars was closer to Earth on June 21 than it had been in a dozen years. The red planet, which will remain bright in the sky for the next couple of weeks, came within 42 million miles of Earth. However, according to NASA, the really close visit during "opposition" - when orbits put Earth between Mars and Sun - will come in August 2003. That's when Mars will be only 34.6 million miles away. That's also when NASA plans to send two rovers to Mars, each capable of exploring distances greater than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover, Sojourner.
MACDONALD, DETTWILER AND ASSOC. LTD., of Richmond, B.C., has been awarded two contracts totaling $6.7 million by the Canadian Space Agency. Under the first contract, worth $5.7 million, MDA will modify the RADARSAT-2 spacecraft to support a proposed tandem mission with RADARSAT-3. The second contract, worth $1 million, is for implementing the second stage of a Mission Definition Study, including the preparation of a detailed implementation plan, for RADARSAT-3.
Textron Systems announced its HR Textron Operations in Santa Clarita, Calif., has been awarded an $18.1 million contract from Raytheon Missile Systems to produce the control actuation system for the AIM-9X "Sidewinder" air-to-air missile. The Wilmington, Mass.-based company said the award is for the first three low-rate initial production lots. First delivery on the contract is scheduled for February 2002, and continued production is expected to occur through 2011.
BETTER WITH AGE: Constructing and deploying a working missile defense system is not only possible today, it will become even easier as time progresses, says Uzi Rubin, special assistant for Research and Development Programs for the Israel Ministry of Defense, who spoke at the Heritage Foundation's June 20 conference on "Missile Defense and America's Allies." Rubin says the technology "is available and it will work.
United Industrial Corp.'s AAI Corp. subsidiary has been awarded two unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) contracts worth $25.4 million for an international program, the company announced June 21. Under the contracts, AAI will provide ground support equipment, including a ground support system, a ground data terminal, a launch control system, an airborne data terminal, an air vehicle recovery system and spare parts. The company will also provide integration assistance for the customer's UAV program.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) said the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) successfully conducted a static test firing of its Third-Stage Rocket Motor (TSRM) for the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3). The test took place at AFRL's simulated altitude test facility at Edwards AFB, Calif., ATK announced June 21.
NASA is postponing - again - the launch of a solar flare satellite mission on a Pegasus booster while engineers continue to look for answers as to why another Pegasus veered out of control in May, the booster's manufacturer says.
A "heads of agreement" signed in May by Saab and Airbus U.K. is expected to lead to the Swedish group's becoming a risk-sharing partner in the 555-seat A380 superjumbo from contract finalization in the next few months. At Le Bourget, Saab senior VP and general manager commercial programs Pontus Kallen said that Saab would be responsible for the 31-meter-long, fixed mid- and outer-wing leading-edge sections of the A380, and is bidding for work on other parts of the aircraft.
NASA is satisfied it has fixed the major problems with the Canadian-built robotic arm on the International Space Station and will continue with plans to fly the station's airlock on Space Shuttle Atlantis next month. "We have formally decided that the 7A [Atlantis] mission is going to be the next shuttle mission that will arrive [at] the space station," flight director John Curry said June 21 at a NASA briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. That mission is scheduled for no earlier than July 12, according to NASA.
Observations from instruments on NASA's Terra spacecraft will provide greater understanding of global climate change, the space agency announced June 21. The first observations of Terra's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments are the most accurate global energy measurements ever, and include the first complete year of such data since 1987. The CERES data, available to researchers at NASA Langley Research Center's Atmospheric Sciences Data Center, in Hampton, Va., capture incoming and outgoing energy over the whole planet.
Alcatel Space announced it has signed a contract with Russia's Babakin Space Center as part of the French Mars exploration program, Premier. The Babakin Space Center will be responsible for the development and production of the landing system on the four atmospheric descent modules in the Mars NetLander mission, work that is part of a European consortium effort. Babakin is proposing an atmospheric re-entry technology inherited from the NASA Mars Pathfinder mission, which used airbags to protect the spacecraft during landing.
