The United Kingdom and Romania signed a Memorandum of Understanding last week confirming each country's commitment to promoting and evaluating commercial and technical cooperation between their aerospace industries. The MOU, announced by the Society of British Aerospace Companies, aims to identify suitable potential partners and encourage and enhance trade links between the two aerospace industries. It will also encourage the promotion of investments between aerospace companies in the two countries.
NANO, NANO: In addition to larger scientific satellites for such applications as X-ray and radio astronomy, nanosatellites may feature prominently on the wish lists of future astronomers. "But we'll need lots of them," says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, webmaster of 'Jonathan's Space Report.' Such a collection of very small satellites could be very useful for near-Earth study. "A cluster of four spacecraft to study the magnetosphere is a start, but I want to instrument the magnetosphere like you would telemeter a rocket.
NO NUKES IS GOOD NUKES: While U.S. officials should not focus so exclusively on one means of delivery of a weapon that they don't think about others, a suitcase nuclear bomb smuggled in from North Korea, Iran or Iraq is not terribly likely, says Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. The U.S. does have at least minimal defense against suitcase bombs today, he notes, with its use of intelligence, customs and the Coast Guard.
SUCCESS ORIENTED: The first payload customer for the first Atlas V launch next May has not yet signed on the dotted line, but Mark Albrecht, president of International Launch Services, is optimistic. "We're very, very close," he says. He rebuffs reporters' requests to identify the customer, saying, "It's like a wedding. [The groom] never [looks] at the bride's dress [before the ceremony].
NEED FOR R&D: The Air Force must invest more money in space R&D efforts for which the financial returns are uncertain, says Maj. Gen. Mike Hamel, director of Space Operations and Integration at Air Force headquarters. "As our budgets have declined, we've sort of imagined that somehow we could leverage commercial investment" in R&D, Hamel says. "But when you start talking about fundamental R&D, where the payoff is totally uncertain and at minimum could be many years away, we certainly realize now that that strategy does not work.
REVIEWS UNVEILED: The findings of some of the strategy reviews that the Pentagon has undertaken since the Bush Administration took office will begin to be revealed this week, sources say. Release of detailed budget numbers and procurement quantities has been held up until officials have analyzed each major program to determine if it fits into the overall structure of President Bush's emerging national security strategy.
SENSOR SERENDIPITY:The Joint Experimentation Directorate (JED) of Joint Forces Command is seeing improved sensor capability by serendipity, says Jack Klevecz, director of the Futures Alliance Deptartment of the JED. While working on attack operations on critical mobile targets, JED took certain sensors designed for different functions and found that by using their algorithms in a different manner and changing some of the protocols, "they were very, very effective in detecting hard-to-get targets and their launchers," Klevecz explains.
The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory recently conducted experiments on using guided parafoils as a way of delivering supplies to soldiers on the battlefield. The system, called the Guided Parafoil Aerial Delivery System, can be guided manually, by beacon or by the Global Positioning System. During the April tests, the Marines made 14 drops of GPADS carrying from 300 to 1,100 lbs. of cargo.
The first P-3 Airborne Early Warning Aircraft equipped with a next-generation "glass" cockpit had a successful first flight from Lockheed Martin's Aircraft Logistics Center in Greenville, S.C., the company announced May 3.
MAKE IT LIKE LEO: Humanity must make operations in the inner solar system as routine as work in low Earth orbit is today. "I believe, in the next 50 years, the inner solar system has to become that kind of plum territory," says McDowell. "We will expand the infrastructure," he says. "We'll have communications and tracking. We're going to have to have air traffic control for the solar system." But we shouldn't stop there, he says. "I do think that we need to go beyond low Earth orbit.
Canadian civilian, industry and military experts agree that unmanned aerial vehicles are likely to take a big role in Canadian Forces surveillance and reconnaissance duties by 2010, and Canada's military - with virtually no UAV experience - is wrestling with just how to make that happen. "The hurdles are not in the technology," said Col. Mark Aruja, who heads Canada's Joint Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Surveillance Target Acquisition System (JUSTAS) project. "We need to grapple with doctrine, concepts of operation and command and control processes."
ROTORCRAFT PLANS: The U.S. Army, aiming to boost the efficiency and affordability of helicopters now in its fleet and to demonstrate technologies that could be used in future rotorcraft, has mapped out a challenging plan to come up with better rotors, structures and drive systems. Several technology efforts at the component or systems level will lead to an advanced technology demonstration program set to run from fiscal 2005 to 2009, which in turn will lead to development of a Large Cargo Transport Rotorcraft beginning in FY 2010.
Israel is taking several steps at home and abroad in hopes of boosting its weapons exports and shoring up the defense industry, according to military and industry officials.
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Assoc. Ltd. has been selected by the Air Force to develop a system to help AF specialists design Instrument Approach Procedures (IAPs). IAPs are published instructions to pilots specifying maneuvers that must be done for an aircraft to safely move from an airway to a runway final approach when flying by instruments. MDA's system uses digital terrain, elevation and navigation data to build and display a virtual model of the physical environment around an airport.
Taiwan and the United States on Thursday signed an agreement to jointly develop and launch by 2005 six micro-satellites to improve weather forecasting abilities for the island. The agreement, signed in Taipei between officials from Taiwan's National Science Council (NSC) and the U.S. National Science Foundation, is aimed at having the spacecraft augment Taiwan's ROCSAT-3, now set for launch late next year, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC) and SpaceData International (SDI) have successfully provided commercial data services to the oil, gas and energy industry using NASA's space and ground assets, the company announced. Under the CSOC contract, Lockheed Martin is authorized to sell available K-band satellite capacity to commercial users as long as there is no commercial alternative.
Using power from U.S. Navy vessels to help ease the energy crunch California is facing is "technically feasible," according to the Pentagon's spokesman, but not really worth the effort.
In an effort to focus federal efforts to combat terrorism and deal with its aftermath, U.S. senators representing several key committees will conduct hearings May 8-10. "These hearings are an important first step toward a coordinated federal effort to combat terrorism," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) in announcing the hearings. "They represent a willingness among congressional committees to join forces to address this important national security issue."
Air Education and Training Command, Randolph Air Force Base, Tex., has issued an operational stand-down from flying to all 180 T-1A Jayhawk training aircraft while the planes undergo inspection for discrepancies. On April 30, Gen. Hal M. Hornburg, AETC commander, issued a 72-hour stand-down, which has now been extended at least another 24 hours, Lt. Col. Billy Birdwell, spokesman for the training command, told The DAILY.
CYBERNET SYSTEMS, an Internet research and development company in Ann Arbor, Mich., has had its gesture recognition technology selected by NASA for use at the space agency's new Bioastronautics Exhibit at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. At the exhibit, scheduled to open in August, visitors will be able to lead their own virtual reality tours of the International Space Station by commanding a computer with a series of simple hand gestures.
Israeli military favors dual capability Maj. Gen. Isaac Ben Israel, the head of the research and development department in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, told reporters that the Raytheon-made AMRAAM is "still a very good missile" that belongs in Israel's arsenal. But he said Israel wanted to develop its own new medium-range missile to keep its technological edge over its potential rivals, some of whom may be able to buy the AMRAAM from the U.S.
The U.S. Army has awarded Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. a $219.7 million research, development, test and evaluation contract to upgrade UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, the company announced May 3. The program will ultimately involve the modernization of as many as 1,200 aircraft over the next 25 years, according to Sikorsky. "This program will marry the latest technology to a venerable battle-tested machine," said Dean Borgman, Sikorsky's president.
XM SATELLITE RADIO has set May 8 as the new launch date for XM "Roll," the second of two satellites built by Boeing Satellite Systems for the company, which plans to broadcast 100 channels of digital-quality radio programs. The satellite, a Boeing 702 model, will launch from the Sea Launch platform in the Pacific Ocean. The first XM satellite, "Rock," launched from the Sea Launch platform on March 18.
COMPUTER SCIENCES CORP. of Falls Church, Va., has had its information services contract with NASA extended by the space agency. The latest option, valued at $108 million, extends from May 1, 2001 to April 30, 2002, continuing services the company has provided since the Program Information Systems Mission Services (PriSMS) contract was originally awarded in 1994.
Three miniature robot airplanes equipped with sophisticated instruments have been buzzing over the Arctic sea ice near Barrow, Alaska, providing University of Colorado-Boulder researchers and North Slope residents with critical new data on atmospheric and environmental changes. Known as aerosondes, the three-foot-long, 30-pound drones made a series of flights last month to help researchers monitor temperatures, humidity and wind speeds, said Judith Curry, an aerospace engineer at the university.
