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.
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.
HUGHES NETWORK SYSTEMS will provide its "Spaceway" broadband satellite service for beta testing under the U.S. military's Wideband Gapfiller Satellite (WGS) contract with Boeing Satellite Systems. Scheduled for launch in North America next year, Spaceway is a high-speed, high-bandwidth system designed to provide bandwidth on demand using Boeing-built on-board digital processors, packet switching and spot beam technology. Under the beta testing program, selected U.S. military forces in the continental U.S. will be able to use the system for a variety of applications.
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.
XM SATELLITE RADIO posted a consolidated operating loss of $20.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2000 as it continued to push development of an S-band digital radio network that would deliver 100 channels of pay-radio programming to the U.S. through two geostationary satellites and related ground repeaters. The consolidated operating loss compared to a loss of $12.9 million in the same quarter of 1999.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Senate Armed Services Committee member Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) urged President George W. Bush yesterday to lift his "freeze" on defense spending, saying the military needs more money now for precision-guided munitions, electronic warfare aircraft and other weapons.
The U.S. military could save $40 billion a year by consolidating duplicative agencies that handle communications, intelligence, logistics and medicine and by eliminating "redundancies" in tactical aviation, air defenses, ground forces and research and development, the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ret. Navy Adm. William Owens, told the Senate Budget Committee Monday. Owens testified that the relatively inexpensive Joint Strike Fighter exemplifies the kind of savings the military could achieve by increasing jointness.
Recon/Optical, Inc., Barrington, Ill., is being awarded a $4,989,000 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for the procurement of one high altitude sensor for the engineering manufacturing development phase of the Shared Reconnaissance Pod Program (SHARP). In addition, the contractor is responsible for the engineering and integration of the high altitude sensor into the SHARP and for logistics support of the sensors. Work will be performed in Barrington, Ill (94%), Indianapolis, Ind. (3%) and China Lake, Calif./Patuxent River, Md.
Five new Assumption of Responsibility (AOR) agreements have been made between the Electronic Data Systems (EDS)-led Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) "Information Strike Force" and the Dept. of the Navy, increasing the number of "computer seats" to about 28,250 nationwide.
The Boeing Co., Seattle, Wash., is being awarded an $800,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract to provide for up to seven C-40 aircraft and up to ten years of associated contractor logistics support. The contract has provisions that can allow for incorporation of the contractor logistics support effort for the C-32 aircraft into this contract. At this time, $59,453,000 of the contract funds have been obligated. Solicitation began December 2000; negotiations were completed January 2001.
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.
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.
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.
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.
