Progress M-41 docked with Russia's Mir orbital station Sunday, carrying a load of supplies for the two Russians and one Frenchman aboard. The supply capsule, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Friday (DAILY, April 5), docked automatically. It carried 5,363.6 pounds of cargo including food, fuel, oxygen, scientific equipment and repair parts. The next Progress mission is scheduled this summer, after which the aging space station is to be deorbited unless a private investor can be found to fund its continued operation.
Members of the International Civil Aviation Organization are scheduled to report their Y2K readiness by July 1 but until then, little will be known about how some nations are progressing, Joe Morgan, head of the FAA's international Y2K effort, said yesterday in Washington. In the U.S., the top 50 airports will have been checked by the FAA, and the top 150 will have received visits by Aug. 1, Dave Bennett, director, Office of Airport Safety and Standards, said.
From Commerce Business Daily: Posted in CBDNet on April 1, 1999; Printed Issue Date: April 5, 1999; PART: U.S. GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENTS SUBPART: SERVICES; CLASSCOD: A-Research and Development; OFFADD: R&D Contracting Directorate, Bldg 7, 2530 C Street, WPAFB, OH 45433-7607; SOL PRDA BAA No. 99-02-SNK; DUE 050799; POC Contact Traci O. Dietz, Contract Negotiator, (937) 255-2976, or Contracting Officer, Nancy F.I. Stormer, (937) 255-5311
DBS Industries, Inc. (DBSI) has awarded $47 million in contracts to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. of Surrey, England, and EUROKOT, a German/Russian joint venture, to build and launch the E-Sat constellation of six low-Earth orbiting satellites. EUROKOT is a joint venture of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (DASA) of Germany and Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center of Russia.
GOODYEAR TIRE&RUBBER CO. said its is supplying "intelligent tires" for Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter. A transponder embedded in the rubber of the tire to sense and transmit inflation pressure and temperature, and track a unique tire serial number.
A $40 million adaptive optics system being installed at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Maui Space Surveillance Complex in Hawaii is expected to produce images of orbiting space objects of unprecedented clarity, AFRL reported last week.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems formally delivered the first C-130J Hercules to the U.S. Air Force Reserve March 31 at ceremonies at Keesler AFB, Miss. The plane is the first of two training aircraft, and will be used by the 403rd Wing at Keesler. Later in the year, Lockheed Martin will start delivering nine WC-130J weather reconnaissance aircraft. The C-130J has a new digital avionics architecture, a new propulsion system, twin head-up pilot displays and dual mission computers.
Comptek Research Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., said it has won a U.S. Navy contract for a Mobile Remote Emitter Simulator (MRES) to simulate threat radars. The $4.9 million contract, from the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command, contains options for as many as four MRES systems valued at up to $17.8 million.
Matra Marconi Space has signed a 60 million euro ($64.4 million) contract from the European Space Agency for the accelerated development of the Mars Express probe for launch in June 2003, ESA reported.
German shipyard Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG has awarded a $22 million contract to Kollmorgen Corp., Waltham, Mass., to produce advanced submarine periscopes for the Turkish navy. Under the contract Kollmorgen will build four Model 76 Attack and Model 76 Search periscopes, which will include image intensifiers, laser ranging, CCD TV cameras, image stabilization, magnification changes and an imaging system. The Turkish navy has eight Model 76 Kollmorgen periscope systems. The new systems will be installed on Type 209 submarines.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems formally delivered the first C-130J Hercules to the U.S. Air Force Reserve March 31 at ceremonies at Keesler AFB, Miss. The plane is the first of two training aircraft, and will be used by the 403rd Wing at Keesler. Later in the year, Lockheed Martin will start delivering nine WC-130J weather reconnaissance aircraft. The C-130J has a new digital avionics architecture, a new propulsion system, twin head-up pilot displays and dual mission computers.
NATO introduced the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle into operations over Yugoslavia on Thursday, and planned to bring in the Hunter UAV this week, Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters Friday. Bacon wouldn't say if the poor weather that has hindered air operations was an impediment to UAV performance. The weather was projected to improve in coming days. The UAVs will supplement reconnaissance assets in Kosovo by providing closer looks at small areas (DAILY, March 30).
U.S. Federal Communications Commission regulators have cleared Hughes Electronics Corp. to buy the business and assets of United States Satellite Broadcast Co. (USSB), so it can add USSB's on-orbit transponders and popular programming to the DirecTV business. In the past USSB's HBO and Showtime channels have been offered as add-ons to DirecTV's 4.3 million subscribers, but with the acquisition those customers will be able to acquire the content directly. Hughes and USSB expect the deal to close this summer.
Spacewalkers on the upcoming STS-96 Space Shuttle mission to the new International Space Station will check out a malfunctioning antenna on the U.S.-built Unity node, but they won't replace it. The U.S. antenna, which has a relatively insignificant degradation in performance when the Station is in certain attitudes, is part of the communications system that will serve the Station early in its assembly (DAILY, March 22).
Honeywell Airport Systems has signed an agreement with the FAA to jointly develop the technology and operational standards for GPS-based precision approach and landing through the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) program.
While government has a role in aerospace and defense mergers, it should be more in terms of establishing criteria for industry executives to follow rather than making final decisions, says John Douglass, president the Aerospace Industry Association. "We think the decisions to merge or not to merge are much more appropriately made in the board rooms than they are by bureaucrats," he says.
A Science Applications International Corp. team won a contract worth a potential $39 million from U.S. Naval Air Systems Command to develop advanced flight test technologies over the next five years. In the contract's first year, valued at $7.4 million, SAIC said it will provide engineering and technical services to support development and utilization of advanced flight test technology for evaluating air vehicle flying qualities, controllability and weapons accuracy.
With the failure last week of the THAAD missile to hit a target, the sixth such failure in a row, alternatives are being studied if the missile continues to fail in five upcoming tests, says Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Director Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles. If targets are hit in three of those tests, the program technically should move into the engineering and manufacturing development phase, Lyles notes. He declines to provide details on backup plans.
Early results of an attempt to capture meteoroid particles in the stratosphere during last fall's Leonid meteor shower will be discussed at a NASA Ames Research Center workshop next week. Researchers from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center have been examining eight tiny particles caught in an aerogel snare dangled from a weather balloon that reached 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in altitude during the storm.
A Russian Delta III submarine fired an SS-N-18 sea-launched ballistic missile from the Barents Sea to a simulated target at the Kamchatka Peninsula in the culmination Thursday of large-scale exercises of the Northern Fleet. However, the wording of the launch announcement by the press service of the Russian Navy leaves open the possibility that the launch missed its target. According to the press service, the warhead of the missile "reached the range on Kamchatka precisely in a designated time."
The Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter team has selected Parametric Technology Corp.'s "Windchill" as its collaborative engineering architecture for the JSF program. The Windchill web-based architecture, designed by Parametric of Waltham, Mass., will allow the JSF team to work collaboratively with partners and supplies. Parametric said yesterday that Windchill allows for the integration of databases and legacy systems to facilitate information sharing.
NASA's Deep Space 1 technology testbed is finding its own way through space after a rough start that led some Jet Propulsion Laboratory veterans to privately term the faster-better-cheaper prototype as "Deep [expletive deleted] 1." Designed to become the first spacecraft to determine its own position in space, the probe's "AutoNav" system has now guided the spacecraft for more than a month, using a star tracker and sophisticated software to calculate where it is and where it is going, and to make trajectory corrections by throttling the probe's ion engine.
Mark Newman, chairman, president and chief executive officer of 30-year-old DRS Technologies Inc., said his company wants to be a "significant survivor" of the aerospace and defense industry's consolidation movement. "And I say significant," Newman said, "because a lot of companies tend to survive in our business if you're in niche products."
