SPACESUIT AWARD: NASA will spend an estimated $4.38 million with ILC Dover on the design, manufacture and test of a next-generation spacesuit, under a contract announced April 25. Designed to improve astronaut capability during extravehicular activities, the Z-2 suit will operate at higher pressure than previous models, to improve productivity. It will also be designed to work with existing airlocks and new designs in development at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) are backing studies to address a range of health and performance issues confronting astronauts assigned to long-duration spaceflight, ranging from the vision impairments that have surfaced recently with International Space Station crew members to fundamental concerns like nutrition. The $17 million in grant awards to 23 principal investigators associated with 18 U.S. university, government and private-sector institutions will span from one to three years.
The five-segment solid rocket booster under development by ATK and Marshall Space Flight Center as part of NASA’s Block 1 Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket has completed a Preliminary Design Review that supports an unpiloted test flight with the Orion crew vehicle in 2017.
U.S. AIR FORCE Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Aerospace Systems Sector, San Diego, Calif., is being awarded a $35,696,841 contract modification (P00490) of F33657-01-C-4600 for Global Hawk engineering and manufacturing development. The total cumulative face value of the multi-year contract is $2,297,747,550. Work will be performed at San Diego, Calif., and is expected to be completed by January 2017. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2013 and 2014. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/WIGK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio is the contracting activity.
U.S. Army Thales Raytheon Systems Co., LLC., Fullerton, Calif., was awarded a $23,147,096 modification (No. P00003), to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (W31P4Q-13-C-0082), to procure Sentinel Mode 5 Identification Friend or Foe kits and spares. The total cumulative face value of the contract is $30,442,096. Fiscal 2013 procurement funds are being obligated on this award. The Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Ala., is the contracting activity.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital reusable spaceplane went supersonic Monday morning during a 16-sec. flight test of its hybrid rocket motor. The short-duration flight over Mojave, Calif., with two test pilots from Scaled Composites at the controls, brings SS2 a major step closer to its first flight into space, and ultimately to flights with paying tourists and researchers in the pressurized cabin.
A failure review oversight board (FROB) convened by Sea Launch and Energia Logistics Ltd. has accepted the findings and proposed fixes of contractors investigating the Jan. 31 failure of a Sea Launch Zenit 3-SL shortly after liftoff from the Sea Launch Odyssey floating launch pad. The failure cost Intelsat a new communications satellite — Intelsat 27, designed to operate in the C- and Ku-bands for customers in the Americas, the North Atlantic region and Europe — and a hosted communications payload that could have been sold to a government customer.
OBSERVING EARTH: The commercial sector is expected to make up a significant part of future demand for space-based imagery intelligence (Imint), according to Adam Keith, director of space and Earth observation (EO) at Euroconsult. Only 11 countries have developed EO defense capacity dedicated to supporting Imint; the number of unclassified defense and dual-use satellites launched by these 11 countries totaled 75 over the past decade.
BEIJING — China has begun building a high-definition Earth-observation system, with its first space launch of 2013. A Long March 2D rocket launched the Gaofen 1 satellite and three other, small spacecraft for foreign customers on April 26 from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China. Gaofen 1 is the first of five or six spacecraft that are planned to be launched for high-definition observation of the planet between now and 2016, say state media. “Gaofen” means “high definition.”
HOUSTON — The International Space Station crew began to unload cargo from the Russia’s unpiloted Progress 51 resupply capsule on April 26, within hours of an automated docking ultimately unimpeded by a navigation antenna that failed to deploy after liftoff. The freighter, filled with just over three tons of propellant, water, research gear, spare parts and other supplies, eased into the aft docking port of the Russian segment Zvezda service module at 8:25 a.m. EDT.
The first Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus commercial cargo carrier is fueled and ready for launch to the International Space Station (ISS), a mission NASA says it can accommodate in late June or early July.
HOUSTON — Russian flight control teams worked to free a rendezvous antenna aboard the Progress 51 supply ship that failed to deploy as commanded after the freighter lifted off early April 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station.
