SURREY SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY has released photos taken in orbit by its SNAP-1 nanosatellite, which was launched June 28 by a Cosmos rocket flying from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The 6.5-kilogram spacecraft used its "machine vision system" of four single-chip video cameras to image Russia's Nadezhda COSPAS-SARSAT spacecraft and China's Tsinghua-1 microsatellite. The idea behind the engineering experiment, according to Surrey Space Centre, was to demonstrate that nanosatellies can be used by astronauts and ground controllers to examine the outside of space vehicles.
BARUCH BLUMBERG, a 1976 medicine Nobel laureate, will advise NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin as the U.S. space agency organizes its new Office of Biological and Physical Research, and while it seeks an associate administrator to run the new organization. Blumberg, just named a senior advisor to Goldin on top of his position as head of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and NASA Chief Scientist Kathie L. Olsen will lead the search to fill the associate's slot that Olsen is handling on an acting basis, as well as other posts in the new organization.
European recognition of potential missile threats has spurred two NATO-funded study contracts defining the architecture of a multilateral missile defense system that would likely include the U.S. as a player, according to the Pentagon's top acquisition official.
A Defense Dept. official has directed the Navy to develop a strategy by year's end to improve its ship cruise missiles defenses, according to a memorandum obtained by The DAILY yesterday. The July 31 memo, signed by Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Jacques Gansler, cites a July report by the General Accounting Office that concluded that most Navy surface ships have only limited defenses against cruise missiles (DAILY, July 13). Gansler said the Defense Dept. agrees that the Navy's ship defenses have "deficiencies."
HERLEY INDUSTRIES INC. announced receipt of a $3.5 million contract to provide high frequency microwave communication systems for three South Korean Navy KDX destroyers. The Lancaster, Pa., company previously received the initial contract to install the communication system on the first batch of KDX destroyers. This contract covers the second batch.
QUALCOMM has become a shareholder and limited partner in SkyBridge LP in a deal which gives the Bethesda, Md.-based multimedia satellite service company access to Qualcomm's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology. SkyBridge, which is planning a constellation of 80 broadband low-Earth orbit satellites, expects the Qualcomm CDMA will give it "significant cost advantages" in both user terminals and gateways.
China has upgraded its conventional forces in recent years by buying fighter aircraft and other weapons from Russia, but it remains to be seen whether the People's Liberation Army will be able to use many of those systems to their full effectiveness, according to a Congressional Research Service report. "These developments in PLA modernization will bear watching," CRS wrote in the report, "China's Foreign Conventional Arms Acquisitions: Background and Analysis."
The Aerospace Industries Association said it is developing a list of additional issues that a new commission on the future of the aerospace industry could consider, beyond those contained in the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill that Congress completed last week. The AIA also plans to make procedural recommendations for the commission, said Jon Etherton, assistant vice president of legislative affairs for the Washington-based association.
Rear Adm. John V. Chenevey, the Navy's PEO for Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation, is challenging industry to work with the Navy to develop weapons and training to counter new, high-tech threats. "Our test and training ranges are not configured to develop systems and tactics for warfare at a cyber level," he said at a conference here last week.
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS, New York, said Paul Wengen has been named as acting president of its Space and Navigation business based in Teterboro, N.J. L-3 Space and Navigation makes navigation products for major weapons systems and satellites. Wengen, 44, has over 20 years of management and financial experience in the aerospace industry. He joined the L-3 Space and Navigation staff as a senior vice president in May 2000. Before joining L-3 Communications, Wengen was vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Naval Electronic Surveillance Systems from 1996 to 2000.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) said the U.S. should adopt a policy of "realistic restraint" that would restrict the deployment of troops. "Our country has substantial and inescapable self-interests and world interests, which really necessitate our leadership," the Senate Armed Services Committee member said Tuesday at a forum in Washington. "However," he said, "when it comes to the way we exercise that leadership, especially when it involves military force, I believe our national interests sometime require restraint."
Gulfstream Aerospace and Textron's Cessna Aircraft Co. Gulfstream picked BFGoodrich's Electronic Standby Instrument System (ESIS) model GH-3100 and the Electronic Bearing Distance Indicator (EBDI) model EBDI-4000 as standard equipment on the Gulfstream V-SP aircraft program.
Aerial targets being used to train U.S. military pilots can't replicate threats and have fundamental shortfalls in operational capabilities, but will have to be used for as much as ten more years before replacements are available, according to George Kirby, Director of the Range and Target Systems Program Office of the Air Force's Air Armament Command. He also said there are command and control problems, and interference from commercial frequencies.
The Senate last week approved a one-year extension of the expired Export Administration Act that would increase penalties for violating export controls on dual-use goods and technology. The House previously approved a bill that wouldn't extend the EAA, which expired in 1994, but that would raise the fines for illegally exporting dual-use items, which have both commercial and military applications.
Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger said yesterday that the U.S. needs to significantly boost defense spending or scale back its "foreign policy ambitions." Schlesinger, who was secretary during the Nixon and Ford Administrations, told a Cato Institute policy forum in Washington that current spending levels won't allow the U.S. to continue to be the world's policeman at "low risk." The U.S. has been on a "procurement holiday" since the end of the Cold War, and now that aging equipment has to be replaced, he said.
Boeing Co. has been awarded a $62.2 million contract to provide one C-40B, the military equivalent of the 737-700, to support the Commander in Chief (CinC) replacement program, the Dept. of Defense said yesterday. Contract completion date is Feb. 28, 2002. The contract was awarded by the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Under a new $46 million contract, Cubic Defense Systems of San Diego will join the Raytheon consortium that is developing the U.K.'s Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR) system. Cubic will integrate its broadcast data link technology into ASTOR. According to the terms of the deal, Cubic and its U.K. partner, Ultra Electronics, will provide air data terminals, ground data terminals, spares and 10 years of support.
China claims any U.S. effort with Japan to develop a theater missile defense (TMD) system in East Asia could compromise international security and trigger an arms race. Beijing contends in a new white paper, "China's National Defense in 2000," that U.S.-Japanese TMD efforts will extend the offensive and defensive capabilities of the two countries to "unprecedented levels," and "far exceed the defensive needs of Japan." The report is particularly critical of attempts "by any country" to cover Taiwan "in any form" with a theater missile defense umbrella.
RAYTHEON AUSTRALIA'S Naval and Engineering Center at North Ryde in Sydney formally opened for business on Oct. 13. The facility will focus on combat system capability development, later expanding to include systems and engineering services in support of Australia's Defense Forces.
Just as the Pentagon was learning about last week's terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the Defense Dept.'s top acquisition official was across town in Washington discussing the potential for such a problem if the U.S. implements a ship-based national missile defense system. Jacques Gansler, under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology explained to reporters during a breakfast briefing on Oct. 12 that having an NMD system aboard ships raised new and specific issues.
Eaton Corp. turned in operating earnings per share of $1.40 for the third quarter of 2000, down 3% from the year-ago period, but consistent with the company's earning warning issued last month (DAILY, Sept. 20). "This performance ... clearly shows the benefits of Eaton's business diversification, even with the extraordinarily volatile conditions we are seeing in North American vehicle markets," Alexander M. Cutler, chairman and CEO.
DANIEL P. BURNHAM, chairman and chief executive officer of Raytheon Co., has been appointed chairman of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). He succeeds Van B. Honeycutt, president, chairman and chief executive officer of Computer Sciences Corp., who has served as NSTAC chairman since September 1998.
NASA didn't follow U.S. State Dept. guidelines for overseeing biotechnology grants to Russia and so may have inadvertently wound up funding germ warfare laboratories for purposes that to this day remain unknown to the agency, the NASA Inspector General's office reported yesterday. The report drew a quick response from a key Republican committee chairman, who charged "NASA's lack of vigilance is unforgivable."
Astronauts Leroy Chiao and Bill McArthur completed the third of four spacewalks in the ongoing STS-92 mission to the International Space Station yesterday, installing components and setting latches to prepare the first Station truss element to receive the first of its big solar arrays. Chiao and McArthur began repressurizing the airlock on the Space Shuttle Discovery at 5:18 p.m. EDT, six hours and 48 minutes after they ventured outside in their second extravehicular activity of the mission.
