Y0UNG REPORT: Scott Hubbard, the new Mars Program Director at NASA headquarters, says agency planners are keeping the recommendations of the Mars '98 failure review panel at the forefront of their minds as they rework the agency's strategy for exploring the Red Planet.
LOCKHEED MARTIN'S SANDERS unit on Friday delivered the F-22 fighter's Block 3 electronic warfare operational flight program software to the Avionics Integration Lab in Seattle. The delivery was made ahead of the Aug. 15 deadline. The software is slated to fly on an F-22 in December.
Orbital Sciences Corp., in the midst of a "rebuilding and shareholder enhancing" phase, turned in a mixed bag of second quarter financials and cut top-line growth projections for this year from 15% to 10%. Questions over the financial health and fate of the company's ORBCOMM unit continue to hang over Orbital's stock. Analysts lowered recommendations in the wake of the earnings news. Lehman Brothers went to a Buy from an Outperform, and at Bank of America, the stock was cut from a Strong Buy to a Buy.
The Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) team has selected Martin-Baker over BFGoodrich to supply the ejection seat for its aircraft, a move that Lockheed Martin officials said was based on advantages in high technology, safety and cost. The Martin Baker Mk16E seat, a variant of the Eurofighter and NASA T-38N ejection seats, was chosen after a 12-month competition.
Athena Technologies will install a flight control system monitor on the Navy's X-31 Vector high angle of attack maneuverability aircraft. The Failure Detection and Warning Unit, or FDWU, is designed to detect failures or anomalies in sensors or actuators, and provides alerts and guidance to the flight crew, according to Athena, based in Manassas, Va.
LEARNING CURVE: Materials engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center have started the search for a way to fix the composite-skin "microcracking" that allowed hydrogen and nitrogen into the core of the composite liquid hydrogen tank developed for the X-33 reusable launch vehicle testbed, with disastrous results (DAILY, Aug. 11).
SAMPLE RETURN: One outcome of the Mars program restructuring due to be announced early in October may be the sample return mission that was the near-term goal of NASA's Mars strategy until the Mars '98 losses. As the Mars scientific community debates how it wants to approach the planet over the next two decades, an alternate approach has surfaced along with the tantalizing possibility that liquid water may still occasionally flow on the surface there (DAILY, June 22, 23).
KEEPING ON: NASA's cooperative agreement with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to build the X-33 expires at the end of the year, and so far talks between the agency and the company on restructuring it have lagged. But the NASA X-33 program manager expects the "complex" negotiations to draw to a close in the weeks ahead and the program to restart. "I don't see any indication on either the NASA side or the Lockheed Martin side to withdraw from the program," Gene Austin said.
A PART BY ANY OTHER NAME: Sounding a familiar theme, H. Lee Buchanan, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, says the Navy and Marine Corps must change the way they conduct R&D and buy things, "eliminating pieces of the process that are cumbersome." Once into the procurement cycle, he says, "momentum carries the program along so that it is next to impossible" to make changes.
CORRECTION: The cost of maintaining the no-fly zones over Iraq is $1.1 billion a year, according to the Pentagon. It originally said the cost to date is nearly $2 billion (DAILY, Aug. 3, p. 176).
COMPETITIVE SOURCING: The General Accounting Office says the Defense Dept. likely achieved savings by allowing private firms to compete with the government for missile maintenance work at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and for aircraft maintenance work at Altus AFB in Oklahoma, even though government organizations won in both cases. But the savings were less than DOD originally estimated, although precise figures couldn't be determined, the GAO report says.
The National Transportation Safety Board wants revised inspection procedures for certain General Electric CF6-50 and -80 engines to help prevent cracked spools that could trigger uncontained engine failures. NTSB called on the FAA to make the move based on information gleaned from more than a dozen uncontained failures of CF6-50s and -80s, including one on June 7 on a Varig 767-200ER.
A USAF F-16 FIGHTER crashed in the Nevada desert Tuesday night about 70 miles north of Nellis AFB after apparently clipping another F-16 during a training exercise, officials reported. The pilot, Maj. David J. Kossler, ejected safely and the other plane landed without incident but with minor damage, a Nellis spokesman said. It was the second crash in a week for Nellis - an F-15C from the 48 th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, England, flying in the USAF's Green Flag exercises, crashed Aug. 3 into a dry lake bed about 125 miles from the base.
AMERICAN AIRLINES has placed a firm order for six Boeing 777-200ER and three Next-Generation 737-800 airplanes, Boeing said. It said the orders are exercised options from a 1996 contract announcement for more than 100 Boeing airliners and more than 500 options over the next 20 years.
The Royal Australian Navy is negotiating with Raytheon Systems Co. Australia for a $60 million Electronic Warfare (EW) Training Services contract aimed at bolstering the fleet's operational effectiveness. Five commercial offers were evaluated for the 10-year deal. Subject to final discussions, Raytheon is slated to begin operational phase-in early next year, and achieve full service by mid-2001.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has no plans to make personnel changes like the one Boeing made last Friday when it removed John Peller from the helm of its National Missile Defense Lead System Integrator (LSI) program in the wake of booster problems and schedule delays. "The Boeing decision was strictly internal," a Pentagon spokesman said. "There are no similar changes planned nor anticipated for within BMDO."
CPI Aerostructures, Edgewood, N.Y., posted net earnings of $305,695 on revenues of $7,351,536 for the company's second fiscal quarter - respective increases of 183% and 41% year-over-year. Year-to-date net income is up 252% over the previous year, while revenues have experienced a 51% rise versus a year ago.
NASA has decided to send two identical rovers to Mars in 2003, taking advantage of "excellent" planetary positioning to double the potential science gain and reduce risk in a $600 million mission that will require other agency programs to chip in funds. NASA's senior management has decided to make the two rovers an "agency priority," allowing the Office of Space Science to tap funds from other offices to pay for the second rover. Over the three years before launch the other NASA "codes" will ante up about $200 million for the second rover project.
DRS TECHNOLOGIES INC. appointed Gen. Dennis J. Reimer (USA-Ret.), former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, to its board of directors, boosting total membership to ten.
The White House announced late Wednesday that President Clinton signed the fiscal 2001 defense appropriations bill into law despite having concerns about several provisions, including a funding cut for the Joint Strike Fighter. "I have signed this bill because, on balance, it demonstrates our commitment to the military, meets our obligations to the troops, maintains readiness, and funds modernization efforts that will ensure our technological edge in the 21st century," Clinton said in a statement.
RAYTHEON CO. has won a Lockheed Martin contract valued at more than $1.4 billion to design, develop and manufacture three engineering and manufacturing development radars for the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) System.
The U.S. Navy must embrace novel outside technologies to keep pace with the flexibility required for new ways of warfighting, according to H. Lee Buchanan, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. "We need to look in very different places for new technologies," Buchanan said at a conference in Washington. He pressed for what he called "disruptive technologies" that make present technologies obsolete by allowing radical improvements.
LABARGE INC., St. Louis, won a $1 million contract to supply printed circuit board assemblies for Northrop Grumman's smart missile countermeasure system. The company will produce the electronic assemblies for the Directional Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system in Tulsa, Okla., with work expected to run through December.
Pemco Aviation Group Inc. and Italy's Officine Meccaniche Aeronautiche S.p.A. (OMA) signed an agreement under which OMA will manufacture kits to convert Boeing 737s from passenger to cargo operations. Pemco will install the FAA compliant kits. OMA manufactures cargo conversion assemblies for such customers as Aeronavali of Italy, which makes cargo modifications for the DC-10. Pemco handles the modification and maintenance of commercial aircraft at its Dothan, Ala., facility.
Sixteen AV-8B Harrier aircraft have been approved to return to flight following a one-month suspension, the U.S. Marine Corps said yesterday. The nearly fleet-wide halt was called after the failure of a No. 3 engine bearing assembly in the Rolls-Royce F402-RR-408 engine of one Harrier appeared to cause a fire that resulted in loss of the jet on June 21 at Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif. The pilot ejected safely (DAILY, July 17).
