U.S. Army Gen. (ret.) Rick Lynch and Paul McDuffee have joined the board of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Arlington, Va. Lynch commanded the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Div. at Fort Hood, Texas. McDuffee is Insitu's principal interface with the FAA on the commercial viability of unmanned aircraft.
Gen. Jean-Paul Palomeros (see photo), chief of staff of the French air force, has become director of the European Air Group, based at RAF Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, for a two-year term. He succeeds Lt. Gen. Aarne Kreuzinger-Janik, commander of the German air force.
Mike Leinback has become director of human spaceflight operations at Denver-based United Launch Alliance. He was launch team leader for all NASA space shuttle missions launched since 2000.
Bill Gerstenmaier (see photo), NASA associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, has received the Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics award, given by the Washington-based American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was recognized for his leadership in human spaceflight, culminating in the space shuttle and International Space Station programs.
Proponents of civil space exploration are likely to be disappointed by the details of the NASA fiscal 2013 budget plan to be released Feb. 13, particularly when it comes to Mars. It is already known from previous plans that NASA’s overall budget will be flat and tight, with no major new initiates and a lot of backfill from previous spending shortfalls.
The U.S. Transportation Department wants to develop new spectrum interference standards to protect GPS signals from transmissions in adjacent bands as the battle between broadband-wireless hopeful LightSquared and the GPS industry enters a new phase.
PARIS — U.S.-based Space Systems/Loral has been chosen to supply two high-powered, Ka-band satellites and ground equipment for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), a $2 billion initiative over 15 years that aims to bridge the digital divide between urban and regional communities.
NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions Program is looking for “green” alternatives to toxic hydrazine as a storable propellant for spacecraft, offering contracts worth as much as $50 million each to researchers with promising ideas.
Mergers and acquisitions activity in the aerospace and defense industry reached a record $43.7 billion in 2011, edging out the previous high from 2007 as consolidation in the commercial supply chain gained steam and underperforming defense units were spun off. A PwC study scheduled for release Feb. 7 tallied 341 acquisitions, mergers or spin-offs worth $50 million or more announced during the year.
BEIJING — China is firming up figures on the performance of two members of its forthcoming modular rocket family, with suggestions that at least one of the launchers might be a little better than expected. The figures remain patchy, however. The Long March 6, a light rocket designed for prompt launches, will be able to deliver “not less than 1 metric ton” to a Sun-synchronous orbit of 700 km (435 mi.) altitude, says Yu Menglun, a member of the general-design section at CALT, China’s main rocket builder.
HOUSTON — Applications for a small number of openings in NASA’s astronaut corps soared to 6,372 during the last solicitation period, the second highest total ever. This is despite the fact that the U.S. is an estimated five years away from having a commercial follow-on to the retired space shuttle and nearly a decade from piloted test flights of the agency’s deep space-capable Space Launch System/Multi-Purpose Crew Launch Vehicle.
PARIS — Pushing the limits of a six-day launch window, the European Space Agency (ESA) has shifted the debut of its new Vega rocket to Feb. 13 from Feb. 9, allowing ample time to prepare the flight-qualification campaign. ESA says Vega’s flight-readiness review board met Feb. 2 to evaluate mission-preparation status and plans for the final days of the campaign. The Vega will lift off from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
A multibillion-dollar commercial satellite imagery program and a showcase example of the Obama administration's forward-looking commercial remote-sensing space policy has been targeted for cuts that could impact U.S. military and allied operations and potentially lead to industry consolidation in the U.S. sector.
Are defense contractors earning too much money in an era of budget austerity? That question is being asked at the Pentagon after earnings results showed the industry managed to maintain and in many cases bolster profit margins in 2011, even as growth evaporated.
General aviation groups are urging U.S. regulators to withdraw LightSquared’s conditional waiver for a broadband wireless network, saying the GPS system must be protected from all sources of interference. Their comments are in response to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) request for input on LightSquared’s December petition for a ruling that commercial GPS receivers are not entitled to protection from interference caused by a broadband wireless network operating within technical parameters set by the government.
The first of the retired space shuttle orbiters to go on display will arrive at its final destination April 17. Discovery is due to land at Washington Dulles International Airport atop a shuttle carrier aircraft and then be delivered to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center there two days later. NASA's workhorse shuttle will replace the atmospheric test article Enterprise in the museum display.
Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) has a full list of work to be completed before its first attempt to send a Dragon capsule to rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station, and probably will not meet the March 20 target date set for the mission. Michael Suffredini, NASA’s ISS program manager, says it will be “challenging” to meet the March 20 date.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to distribute some of the minute samples its Hayabusa probe returned from the asteroid Itakowa. The spacecraft, which imaged its shadow against the type-S asteroid as it approached in the fall of 2005 (see photo), returned more than 1,000 asteroid particles measuring about 10 micrometers (0.0004 in.) despite control problems at its target (AW&ST Nov. 22, 2010, p. 18). The tiny samples have been analyzed by Japanese scientists and now will be available in a peer-reviewed opportunity.
NASA’s new technology-development organization is seeking proposals for low-cost, short-development, flight-test projects that will demonstrate communications and proxiimty operations with satellites weighing less than 400 lb., and for propulsion systems for cubesats.
The Vega launch vehicle is the first European rocket to be developed in nearly two decades. But in a departure from Europe's recent past, the small-class Vega was not designed with the commercial launch market in mind.
Medical researchers at the NASA-funded National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) have identified a promising possible alternative to surgery in the treatment of kidney stones developed by astronauts on deep-space missions, or terrestrial humans plagued by the painful ailment. The new technology combines a ultrasound technique that detects obstructive stones called “twinkling artifact” with a treatment that uses a focused ultrasound wave energy to push the obstructions to the kidney’s exit.
It's amazing how much can be packed into a single, seemingly throwaway line when the context is a president's State of the Union address. President Barack Obama didn't even devote a full sentence to rural broadband service in his Jan. 24 speech, but his few words covered a lot of ground.
Alcoa is counter-attacking the rising use of composites in aircraft structures. The global aluminum giant will invest more than $90 million to build a new plant in Lafayette, Ind., capable of churning out 20,000 metric tons a year of advanced alloys that it says will allow airframers to build lighter and lower-weight aircraft. Production is slated to begin in 2014. The company also will expand output of the patented third-generation aluminum-lithium alloys at facilities in western Pennsylvania and the U.K.
