In a major consolidation to address an era of fixed-price contracts and lower defense and civil space spending, Lockheed Martin Space Systems is establishing two basic business lines — military and civil — rather than the separate talent pools devoted to more specific requirements in each of those areas.
The head of satellite services provider Inmarsat says he would like to see more established launch service providers in the market, and hopes that new and returning players such as Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Sea Launch will help foster more choice and competition in the future.
SUN BLOCK: Preflight test layers for the sunshield that will protect NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are meeting performance targets during engineering tests, according to telescope prime Northrop Grumman. The tennis-court-sized sunshield is designed to keep the telescope cool enough in its Earth-trailing orbit for its sensitive infrared instruments to work. The membrane layers of the sunshield, each as thin as a human hair, are made of Kapton. ManTech International produces the sunshield.
James Albaugh, a 37-year veteran at Boeing who has been a management leader in all of the company’s product markets—space, defense and airliners—on Oct. 1 will retire as president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). Boeing Chairman and CEO James McNerney has named Raymond Conner, another company veteran, to succeed Albaugh. Conner, who is an executive VP, joined Boeing 34 years ago as a mechanic and currently heads the company’s global sales operations.
FOUL WEATHER: The looming arrival of Tropical Storm Debby has prompted United Launch Alliance and the U.S. Air Force to delay the launch of the National Reconnaissance Office’s latest classified satellite by 24 hr. The launch of NROL-15 is now set for June 29 at 6:13 a.m. from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral. The protective Mobile Service Tower will remain around the Delta IV launch vehicle and is scheduled to be moved for launch on June 28.
SATCOM MARKET: The worldwide commercial communications satellite market will be worth $52.7 billion from 2012-2021, according to a new study from consultancy Forecast International. Demand will be especially strong in developing markets such as Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, the study says, driven by a lack of terrestrial networks and rapid growth in demand for communications in these areas. The top manufacturers over the next decade will be Space Systems/Loral, Thales Alenia Space, EADS Astrium, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The most powerful version of Space Exploration Technologies' Merlin rocket engine yet developed has completed its first full-duration mission firing test
LOS ANGELES — NASA is completing fabrication of the first Lockheed Martin Orion crew exploration capsule due to be tested in space, while at the same time starting key vacuum tests on the Alliant Techsystems (ATK)-built composite module that could form the basis for future crew transport to Earth orbit. Following final structural work, the Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) Orion will be shipped from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., where it will undergo final assembly and checkout.
The U.S. Air Force Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program is 50-for-50 with the liftoff June 20 of a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on an Atlas V, notching a perfect record in 50 launches since August 2002. Here the Atlas V, a 401 configuration with a 4-meter payload fairing, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, with the NROL-38 payload. Liftoff was at 8:28 a.m. EDT, and the NRO termed the mission a success.
Every day, hundreds of aircraft traverse the world's busiest oceanic airspace over the North Atlantic, spending most of their journey out of range of existing surveillance technology. A planned global satellite-based service could change that, bringing the advantages of air traffic control to this vital corridor as well as to other areas lacking surveillance coverage.
DARK MATTERS: European scientists finally have agreed to start the $1 billion Euclid project, devoted to the study of dark energy. After months of delay in securing approval, Euclid still proved too compelling to set aside, despite far exceeding the funding allocated for what the European Space Agency calls its medium-class missions. The 2,160-kg (4,750-lb.) satellite is scheduled to launch to the L2 Lagrangian point in the second quarter of 2020 aboard a European variant of the Soyuz rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
The U.S. Air Force is gearing up to set another round of firsts with the pending third launch of the Boeing X-37B, but what those milestones may be will remain as much of a mystery as it has been with the recently completed second flight. Looking relatively pristine after its fiery reentry through the atmosphere, the second X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-2) completed a record-breaking 15-month classified mission with a textbook autonomous landing at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on June 16.
ICY MOON: Mapping the floor of the Moon’s Shackleton Crater in what NASA describes as unprecedented detail, agency scientists and university researchers have calculated that unusually bright laser returns from the crater floor may be caused by ice mixed in with other material there. As much as 22% of the surface material in Shackleton could be ice, according to a paper published in the journal Nature, based on laser-mapping data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnnaisance Orbiter.
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. government decided to merge its military and civilian polar-orbiting weather satellite programs, because they shared a number of similarities. The combination of future weather-satellite systems into a single program, designated the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (Npoess), was justified as a cost-saving measure. Consequently, military-civilian weather satellite ground control stations were integrated into NOAA facilities at Suitland, Md.
HOUSTON — U.S. and Canadian Space Agency ground-control teams successfully advanced techniques outside the International Space Station (ISS) this week for extending the lives of aging satellites by refueling them, repairing damage or moving inactive spacecraft to prevent them from becoming collision hazards.
The independent organization that NASA selected to run National Laboratory work on the International Space Station may be off to a slow start, but outside “pathfinders” on the ISS are demonstrating ways to use its unique environment that already fall outside traditional government methods.
