EUROPE*STAR has opened an office in Cape Town, kicking off its operations in Southern Africa. The company's Europe*Star 1 satellite will include the region in its five surface Ku-band "footprints," and the company will use the new office to push its service there.
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER and the Clear Lake Area Economic Development Foundation (CLAEDF) have signed up for the Paris Air Show this year in the Global Solutions Pavilion organized by AADI/Hannover Fairs USA Inc., of Princeton, N.J. Some 65 members of the CLAEDF will participate in the air show exhibition to promote businesses in the Houston/Clear Lake/Galveston, Tex., area, including informational technology, medical, energy, life sciences, aerospace and aviation.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre has been appointed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to the congressionally mandated Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry.
The U.S. Marine Corps is not giving up on its plans to procure at least 360 MV-22 tilt-rotor Osprey and 609 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, despite approval and funding turmoil the two aircraft may face under Congress and the new Bush Administration.
President George W. Bush nominated Richard L. Armitage to be deputy secretary of State on Monday. Armitage previously served as coordinator for technical and humanitarian assistance to the independent states of the former Soviet Union, which carried the rank of ambassador. He also served as presidential negotiator for the Philippines Military Base Agreement under President George H.W. Bush, was a special mediator for water in the Middle East and was a special emissary to Jordan during the Persian Gulf War.
A descending U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter accidentally struck another Black Hawk on the ground in the Feb. 12 accident in Hawaii that killed six soldiers, The Daily has learned. The crash took place at 7:40 p.m. at the U.S. Army Kahuku military training area in a remote part of northern Oahu. Weather conditions were rainy but the ceiling was 3,500 feet, "not ideal but...conditions that were flyable, well within the limits," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman.
Computers in the International Space Station Alpha's new Destiny laboratory took control of the Station's orientation for the first time yesterday, according to NASA officials, which also marked the first time Mission Control Center-Houston (MCC-H) directly controlled the station. Control will be handed back and forth between the Destiny module and the Russian Zvezda as the latest Station construction mission goes on, NASA officials said yesterday. The Shuttle Atlantis is slated to land Sunday.
WHITE SANDS TECHNOLOGY INC., Canoga Park, Calif., will supply its "ProActive DBA 5.0" space management system to Lockheed Martin for use on the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program. The White Sands software will be used with several different Sybase systems to keep SBIRS databases available around the clock, according to the software company.
Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) has issued BFGoodrich Company a low rate initial production (LRIP) contract worth about $7 million for 20 Integrated Mechanical Diagnostics-Health and Usage Management Systems (IMD-HUMS) for the Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion and MH-53E Sea Dragon fleets. Deliveries are to begin in May of this year. IMD-HUMS gathers information on the condition of aircraft systems during each flight, and the date is then transferred to a ground-based computer system for processing, analysis and maintenance decisions.
SPACEDEV has used a $200,000 state grant from California and its own funds to complete and equip an 1,800-square-foot satellite and space vehicle manufacturing facility in the San Diego area. The Poway, Calif., commercial space venture plans to build and test small satellites under a contract with the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkley, and is already using the high-bay area of the facility to build hybrid rocket motors for its planned orbital Maneuvering and Transfer Vehicle.
PHILLIPE PERRIN of the French Space Agency has been named to the crew of STS-11/utilization flight 2 to the International Space Station Alpha, NASA announced yesterday. That flight is scheduled to go to the ISS in early 2002 and will carry experiment and resupply equipment and install final hardware for the Canadian robotic arm. Perrin is the first to be named to the crew.
Japanese manufacturers historically linked to Boeing aircraft projects have been invited by Airbus Industrie to join the A380 development program on a risk-sharing basis. The Airbus offer could put more pressure on Boeing, which has been reluctant to commit to final designs of the 747X.
The House Armed Services Committee procurement subcommittee has gained seven new Republican members and no Democrats, while the research and development panel has picked up seven Republicans and four Democrats for the 107th Congress. Both subcommittees have 15-13 party-line splits. New Republicans on procurement are Reps. Joel Hefley (Colo.), Howard McKeon (Calif.), Don Sherwood (Pa.), Heather Wilson (N.M.), Rob Simmons (Conn.), Mark Kirk (Ill.) and JoAnn Davis (Va.).
President George W. Bush said he plans to selectively modernize the Defense Dept.'s existing arsenal while developing new high-tech weapons that include unmanned vehicles and satellite protection systems. Bush announced his fiscal 2002 defense budget will include a $2.6 billion "down payment" to develop a new generation of weapons.
MARY SIMMERMAN has been appointed vice president of supplier management for the Boeing Corp.'s Space and Communications Group, the company has announced. She will define the future group supplier management strategy, the company said. Simmerman came to the new post from Boeing's Aircraft&Missiles division.
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON - CLEAR LAKE will be the repository for historical records generated at Johnson Space Center under a memorandum of understanding signed last week. The NASA human spaceflight field center will make available copies of correspondence, memos, reports, interviews and other material to the nearby UH outpost. The first set of documents includes the records of the Apollo lunar program, which had been stored at the Woodson Research Center at Rice University. Material on the Space Shuttle, Space Station Alpha and JSC in general will be delivered later.
TITAN CORP. of San Diego, Calif. has been awarded two five-year blanket purchase agreements from NASA for software independent verification&validation services. The contracts are part of NASA's effort to improve mission success for programs like the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. One agreement, issued by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. covers multiple NASA centers. The second agreement is to provide IV&V services to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Russia and Ukraine are not planning any military missile alliance as a response to U.S plans to build a national missile defense system, Russian officials said in the wake of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma last week. "Ukraine is a nuclear-free state, and we respect this status," Putin told members of the media before the visit. "And we haven't any need to attempt violation of this order of things. All our plans are aimed towards the joint work in the civilian sector."
McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $7,800,000 modification to previously awarded fixed-price incentive-fee contract (N00019-97-C-0136) to incorporate Engineering Change Proposal (ECP) 6035 into F/A-18E/F low rate initial production 3 (LRIP 3) aircraft. This ECP will incorporate trailing edge control surfaces buffet redesign and retrofit into 20 F/A-18E/F LRIP 3 aircraft. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Mo. (59.6%); Mesa, Ariz. (22.7%); Melbourne, Australia (17.4%); and Cecil Field, Fla.
Honeywell International Inc., Phoenix, Ariz., is being awarded $151,928 of a $1,212,480 increment, as part of a $25,000,l000 (estimated base year total) indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity with cost-plus-fixed-fee-task orders contract, with an estimated cumulative total of $50,000,000, for the T55/53 Engine Component Improvement Program. An appropriation number and dollar value will be issued with each task order. Work will be performed in Phoenix, Ariz., and is expected to be completed by Feb. 4, 2006. This is a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 13, 2000.
Longbow LLC, Lockheed Martin Millimeter Technologies Inc., and Northrop Grumman Corp., Orlando, Fla., are being awarded a $6,267,450 increment as part of an estimated $35,000,000 cost-plus-incentive-fee with award-fee feature contract for the development program for Longbow Pre-Planned Product Improvement. Work will be performed in Orlando, Fla. (50%), and Baltimore, Md. (50%), and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2004. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This is a sole source contract initiated on May 5, 2000. The U.S.
Military plans to invest billions in new tactical aircraft and to spend $1.3 billion for structural modifications to its aging F/A-18C/Ds and F-16s through 2014 won't help reduce the average age of aircraft in the force, according to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report released last week. "DOD's planned investment of $258 billion to $338 billion in new tactical aircraft modernization is not likely to decrease the average age of tactical aircraft over the next 25 years," the report says.
Hydraulics International, Inc., Chatsworth, Calif., is being awarded a $54,891,987 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for 299 (best estimated quantity) Hydraulic Component Test Stands (HCT-20) applicable to multiple aircraft. These units allow pressurization of aircraft hydraulic systems without use of aircraft thus allowing for functional check of flight control systems and landing gear operations. The HCT-20 also permits testing of the individual components of an aircraft's hydraulics system. The work is expected to be completed February 2005.
INTEGRAL SYSTEMS, INC., announced it received a sole-source subcontract to complete the final phase of a three-phase upgrade of Air Force simulators for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The subcontract is with Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Missiles and Space Operations division and involves software modifications to the simulators for improved testing, training and anomaly resolution.
Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter X-35C carrier variant (CV) flew 2,500 miles last week in what is probably the first transcontinental flight for an "X" aircraft. It landed at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md. on Saturday to begin four to six weeks of flight testing for carrier suitability in sea-level conditions.
