LOCKHEED MARTIN'S Sanders unit said it is working under a 14-month, $6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to conduct an advanced technology demonstration for the "Orbital Express" space operations architecture. Orbital Express is designed to provide a cost-effective, autonomous capability for on-orbit pre-planned electronics and hardware upgrades, satellite refueling and reconfiguration of spacecraft components to support a range of future U.S. national security, civil and commercial space programs.
KHRUNICHEV CHANGES: Russia's troika of powerful space officials may be about to lose one of its big horses. Russian space observers say Anatoli Kiselev, director general of Khrunichev, will retire soon, and the scramble is on to replace him. That will be hard to do, as Kiselev is a peer of Yuri Semyonov, the head of Energia, and of Russian Aerospace Agency head Yuri Koptiev.
House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) says the Clinton Administration has given him an "unacceptable response" to his request for documents on U.S. efforts to curb Russian arms sales to Iran. "Obviously, the Clinton Administration has something to hide, and, for now, Congress and the American people can only speculate as to what those secrets are," Gilman said in a statement Friday.
STARTING EARLY: Alexei Leonov, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man to leave the safety of a spaceship for an extravehicular activity and later flew as a member of the Soyuz crew that docked with an Apollo capsule in 1975, says the time to start training the next crew to Mars is now. "I believe when this Space Station is in the middle of its service life we'll go back to the moon as an intermediate step to the Mars program," Leonov, now a Moscow businessman, said through an interpreter last week.
The MD-11 will be the next long-range widebody jet freighter for UPS Airline, which will acquire 13 pre-owned aircraft from Boeing over the next four years, according to UPS Chairman and CEO Jim Kelly. The deal also includes options for another 22, which Kelly said could bring the value of the agreement to more than $2 billion. The optional aircraft would be delivered between 2005 and 22010. Boeing will convert the aircraft to freighters which UPS plans on use on flights to Europe and Asia.
NO-FLY ZONE: Boeing hasn't flown its X-32A Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator since Oct. 24 when a test pilot diverted to one of the dry lake beds around Edwards AFB, Calif., because of concern about a potential braking problem. Flight-testing, however, is expected to resume this week. "We've got a fix," a spokesman said, but he was unable to elaborate. The company was slated to continue ground testing during the weekend, and the activity will likely continue through the first of the week.
TAX BREAK STALLS: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) continues to show little interest in having a separate House vote on a tax measure that could save defense exporters big bucks. The measure would revise Foreign Sales Corporation laws to conform them with a World Trade Organization ruling and avoid trade sanctions. It also would eliminate a "discriminator" that limits arms exporters to half the tax reduction benefits enjoyed by other U.S. exporters that use FSCs.
Improvements in integrated logistic support for military engines is anticipated from a strategic partnering arrangement reached on Oct. 31 by the Ministry of Defense's Defense Aviation Repair Agency (DARA) and Rolls-Royce. Owned by the MOD, DARA has provided depot-level repair and overhaul facilities for fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft of the Royal Navy, Army and the RAF, from four sites in the U.K. since its formation on April 1 last year.
CRUNCH TIME: Russia's RSC Energia should be able to keep Space Station Alpha supplied with the Progress capsules it needs for reboost and hazard avoidance for about another year, but after that it's going to be a problem for the cash-strapped aerospace giant, Russian space sources say. The Khrunichev factory can fill the gap by fitting out its FGB-2 space tug as a gap-filler for two or three Progress vehicles (DAILY, Oct. 31), but Khrunichev is working with Boeing to rig the tug as a habitable commercial Station module.
TIME CRITICAL TARGETING: The U.S. Air Force has made a great effort to minimize the time between identification of a target and releasing weapons. The Navy, too, is making this a priority. The USS Harry S. Truman battle group for the first time has integrated the Pioneer UAV into its targeting data link.
CRYOCON INC. is introducing its Deep Cryogenic Tempering (DCT) process to aerospace and defense companies. The company said Thiokol, a unit of Cordant Technologies, will use DCT to increase wear resistance and durability on tooling. Field tests have proven that treated metallic brakes in commercial aircraft have nearly twice the life, the Rancho Sante Fe, Calif., company said. The process can be used to treat a variety of materials, including metals, alloys and synthetics.
LOUD AND CLEAR: Senior U.S. Navy officials say months of effort went into preparation for the recently concluded NATO exercise Unified Spirit, all to make certain that radios of the U.S. and its allies were compatible. But two Navy aviators said that because the Canadian F-18 participants didn't have frequency hopping radio capabilities, "We couldn't talk to the ally guys. We couldn't talk to the Canadians on a classified net. Those guys don't have what we have." What would solve the problem?
Boeing won a contract, estimated at $50 million including options, from the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command to modernize 16 E-6Bs mission systems. "This effort is an effective application of existing commercial and military advanced communications systems and infrastructure to meet military needs in an extremely cost-effective manner," said Chuck Moss, Boeing E-6 program manager.
NASA has "half a dozen" deals in the works designed to boost commercial involvement in Earth orbit and even beyond, including a consortium of Silicon Valley companies coalescing to tackle some sticky software reliability issues, and an Alabama company that plans to build a small satellite on board a Space Shuttle and then "toss it out and see how it goes."
The chairmen of three House committees asked the White House in a letter this week for a series of documents on Russian arms sales to Iran, including any advanced conventional weapons that could destabilize the military balance in the Persian Gulf region.
Alliant Techsystems said it will continue to make the Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition (SLAM) under an 18-month, $4.5 million contract from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at Picatinny Arsenal. The contract features an option that would increase its value to $9.6 million, with production through July 2002.
Alliant Techsystems won a contract to manufacture composite aeroskirts for Boeing's new Delta IV family of space launch vehicles. "We are pleased to add this new contract to the work we are already doing on the Delta IV, which now encompasses 16 separate booster structures," said Steve Icardi, Alliant Techsystems' Delta IV composites program manager.
Canada's Vector Aerospace Corp., a provider of aviation repair and overhaul services, commissioned a new engine line, the Pratt&Whitney Canada PT6A turboprop, at its Atlantic Turbines unit on Prince Edward Island, three months ahead of schedule.
Kellstrom Industries Inc. turned in impressive top-line growth for the third quarter of fiscal 2000 with revenues up 43% year-over-year, to $101.0 million, but said gross margins slipped, from 32% to 23% of sales, due to ongoing pricing pressure at the company's commercial aviation units.
BTG Inc., an information systems and technical services company based in Vienna, Va., has won a five-year contract valued at $69 million for continued work on the Joint Deployable Intelligence Support System (JDISS), which connects intelligence centers, command centers and field commanders. Under the contract, from the Office of Naval Intelligence, BTG will provide the JDISS Joint Program Office with software integration and development, configuration management, program management, and enterprise management support.
While the U.S. Navy is confident in its crews, weapons and equipment, bandwidth for its command, control, communications, computers and information (C4I) systems remains a challenge. "Whenever we operate at sea, whether it is here or worldwide, bandwidth comes at a premium," explained Vice Adm. Michael G. Mullen, commander of the U.S. Navy's 2nd Fleet and NATO commander of Striking Fleet Atlantic. "And there are frequency demands - whether I am operating almost by myself or with many, many ships - that always place a demand on us."
The first full-time crew on the International Space Station moved in and switched on the lights as scheduled yesterday, and as a first order of business gave their new home a name their bosses back on the ground had refused to bestow -"Alpha." Expedition One Commander Bill Shepherd used the first television hookup with the ground, as the crew completed its first orbit aboard the Station, to sandbag NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin into giving the Station a name, at least temporarily.
Primex Technologies' profits jumped more than 28% in the third quarter of fiscal 2000, and the company predicts even bigger earnings gains in the fourth quarter. Calling the third quarter a record, Chairman and CEO Jim Hascall said Primex was on track to "meet or exceed" stated earnings objectives for the year. "Earnings per share, gross margins as a percentage of sales and operating income were the highest in the company's history - our internal process improvement initiatives are working," Hascall said.
The number of small businesses and home offices demanding satellite service will grow about 600% in the next ten years, according to a forecast by Carissa Bryce Christensen, chief space and telecommunications industry analyst at Futron Corp. "Don't take the home office lightly," she says.
President Clinton his signed into law a bill that will indemnify commercial space launches against third-party liability for another four years, through December 2004. The indemnification provisions have been in effect for over 12 years, according to the Aerospace Industries Association, which endorsed the bill.
