Lockheed Martin plans to remain in the race to produce a successor to NASA's aging space shuttle despite losing $356 million on the failed X-33 program. Once perceived the leading contender to replace the space shuttle, the X-33's cost-overruns and poor performance prompted NASA to cancel the Lockheed Martin program March 1. NASA instead pledged to spur technology for space travel through the $4.5 billion Space Launch Initiative, which seeks to develop a second-generation reusable launch vehicle by 2005.
Standard&Poor's has raised its ratings on Pacific Aerospace&Electronics, Inc. The company's ratings remain on CreditWatch with developing implications, which means they can be raised or lowered. The Wenatchee, Wash.-based manufacturer of metal and ceramic components and assemblies for aerospace and other industries has received about $13.8 million of financing from an institutional lender, and has issued a $13.8 million, 18% two-year senior secured note and common stock warrants.
Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), who cowrote a new law creating a commission to study the future of the aerospace industry, will be vice chair of the House Science space subcommittee in the 107th Congress, committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) announced Tuesday. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) will be vice chair of the full committee, and Reps. Timothy Johnson (R-Ill.) and Felix Grucci (R-N.Y.) will have the same jobs on the research and technology subcommittees, respectively.
President Bush will nominate Pete Aldridge to be undersecretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, the White House has announced. He is currently the CEO of the Aerospace Corp. in Arlington, Va. Aldridge held the post of secretary of the Air Force from 1986 to 1988 and has held a variety of positions within the Dept. of Defense.
Gen. James L. Jones, Marine Corps Commandant, denied a report that the Corps is searching for potential alternatives to its troubled V-22 Osprey, the unique tiltrotor aircraft that has been plagued by crashes that killed 23 Marines in two crashes last year. "There has been no watershed event that has prompted me to ask for a search of options, or a study of alternatives to the Osprey, and I have not done so," Jones said in a statement released yesterday in response to a New York Times story.
ALLIANT TECHSYSTEMS INC.'S ratings have been removed from CreditWatch, where they had been placed Jan. 31, 2000, Standard&Poor's reported. The company's pending acquisition of Alcoa Inc.'s Thiokol Propulsion business should have no effect on its credit quality, Standard&Poor's said.
Recent U.S. overtures on missile defense are helping to ease European concerns about American plans to build such a system, NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson said yesterday. Those overtures include the Bush Administration's pledge to build a system that protects American allies as well as the U.S., and the Clinton and Bush Administration's commitment to close consultations with NATO allies on missile defense, Robertson said during an American Enterprise Institute forum on trans-Atlantic relations.
AVBID, INC., an online vertical marketplace for the aviation industry surplus parts market, launched its website at www.avbid.net. AvBid said it will use web-based auction and offer exchange technologies to allow buyers and sellers to acquire and liquidate inventory. AvBid said its affiliate, Auction Marketing, has over 10 years experience in selling commercial and general aviation aircraft, parts and equipment.
Avionics problems and mistakes by pilots and controllers combined to cause a November midair collision between a U.S. Air Force F-16 and a Cessna 172 near Bradenton, Fla., killing the civilian pilot, the service reports. Accident Investigation Board members identified two primary causes for the Nov. 16 mishap - the two pilots' failure to see and avoid each other, and Tampa air traffic controllers' failure to transmit a collision alert warning to the Cessna pilot, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com has reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration yesterday issued four emergency airworthiness directives (ADs) covering Douglas DC-8 and Boeing 747 aircraft and Pratt Whitney JT9D and General Electric CF6-50 turbofan engines. The AD on the DC-8 series aircraft requires modification of the flow control system by rerouting the bleed air ducts to warm the pitot tube lines to keep them from freezing.
Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory is working on an 11-year research program on supersonic flight technologies (SSTs) that could create the country's own SST technologies and allow it to participate in international SST efforts.
Russia's aging Mir space station will likely crash into the Pacific sometime between March 15th and March 20th, depending on solar activity, RSC Energia lead designer Leonid Gorshkov told reporters yesterday. The Mir is currently at an orbit of 258 kilometers (about 160 miles), but that orbit is decreasing by 1.5 kilometers (.93 miles) per day. As currently planned, the Progress M rocket docked to the Mir will produce four braking impulses when the Mir reaches an altitude of 250 kilometers, which could be reached on Friday.
BAE Systems is working under a $30 million-plus contract from Raytheon Systems Co. on five electronic warfare systems for the U.K. Ministry of Defense's Airborne Stand-off Radar (ASTOR) program. The Defensive Aid Group (DAG) systems will be installed aboard modified Global Express business jets, which will carry the ASTOR radar. The ASTOR DAG suite is based on BAE Systems' Defensive Aids Subsystem (DASS), developed for use on the U.K.'s Nimrod II maritime patrol aircraft.
Northrop Grumman Corp. is in line to deliver 47 Litening II targeting pods for the AV-8B Harrier aircraft. The U.S. Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center said in a Commerce Business Daily notice it intends to contract with the company for the pods. Northrop Grumman describes the Litening II is a self-contained, self-cooled, multi-sensor laser target designating system. Features include forward-looking infrared (FLIR), charge-coupled device television and laser spot tracker/range finder sensors.
The U.S. Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. the S-3B Viking Prime Vendor Support (PVS) contract worth $43 million, the company announced Wednesday. The five-year contract includes in-service engineering, integrated logistics support, depot-level scheduled maintenance and material management for the Navy's east coast squadron aircraft.
The Senate Banking Committee hopes to meet sometime next week to mark up a bill aimed at modernizing export controls on dual-use goods and technology, a committee spokeswoman told The DAILY yesterday. The bill, offered by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and three other senators, would reauthorize the Export Administration Act, which restricts the export of items that can have both military and civilian uses.
FAA, which earlier this year issued a sole source proposal to Lockheed Martin to update the Host air traffic control computer system in a contract valued at "hundreds of millions" of dollars, backtracked yesterday and said it will now consider challenges to that selection, Aerospace Daily affiliate Aviation Daily reported. Steve Zaidman, FAA associate administrator for research and development, said that "this is not the typical way we do business. We generally compete our projects."
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and a group of other senators have written to President George W. Bush urging him to approve the sale of DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to Taiwan. The destroyers, equipped with the Aegis combat system, would help Taiwan defend against China's recent military buildup, including advanced Russian missile destroyers and ballistic missiles targeted at the island nation, said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who was among the letter signers.
ISRAEL AIRCRAFT INDUSTRIES LTD.'s MLM division has been given a contract from Cubic Defense Systems for 24 of its "EHUD" Autonomous Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation systems for the Royal Netherlands Air Force. The contract is valued at $9 million and IAI/MLM's share is over $7 million, according to the company. Orders for the EHUD system topped $50 million in 2000, AIA said.
Spacehab, Inc. and RSC Energia have completed a baseline design for their commercial module to go on the International Space Station Alpha and the Russian Aerospace Agency has endorsed the project, Spacehab has announced. According to a Spacehab announcement made Monday, the company and partner Energia are now working on a detailed design and procurement of some long-lead-time materials and components.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. is upgrading the cockpits of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. The upgrade, called Reconnaissance Avionics Modernization Program (RAMP), is slated for completion in 2007. It will cover all 31 operational U-2S models and four two-cockpit trainer versions, the Air Force said.
NASA and the Russian Aerospace Agency have not yet reached an agreement on whether space tourist Dennis Tito will fly to the International Space Station Alpha. "We're continuing our talks," said NASA spokesperson Debra Rahn told The DAILY yesterday. The Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, which includes representatives from Alpha's partners, is working to establish criteria for flying commercial or civilian astronauts like Tito, Rahn said. "That's the first thing that needs to be done," Rahn said.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations trade subcommittee, said he is looking into holding hearings to examine the licensing of commercial satellite exports. Hagel has said he's concerned about claims that the U.S. satellite industry has lost sales since the 1999 transfer of licensing from the Commerce Dept. to the State Dept. But he has expressed skepticism about whether moving licensing back to Commerce is the best approach, since another transfer would be disruptive (DAILY, June 23, 2000).
A scientific radiation monitoring system that has already been used on Russian space stations and the Space Shuttle will now be installed on the International Space Station Alpha during Space Shuttle Discovery's mission there. Discovery is slated to launch at 6:42 EST tomorrow (DAILY, March 6). The Passive Dosimeter System (PDS), provided by the Hungarian Space Office, is the third-generation version of radiation dosimeters that have been used aboard the Russian stations Salyut 7 and Mir and on the Shuttle.
British army very short-range air defense units will achieve a new night/bad weather engagement capability from a 70 million pounds ($105 million) contract announced yesterday with Thales Air Defence Ltd (TADL, formerly Shorts Missile Systems), in Belfast. Thales' infra-red Thermal Sighting System (TSS) will be fitted to the self-propelled version of the army's high-velocity missile (HVM) V-SHORAD air defense weapon, for use against armored helicopters and low-flying aircraft.
