Contract-tower program supporters are appealing to the FAA to limit the number of airport tower closures set to start April 7 due to across-the-board budget cuts. Senate leadership rejected the efforts of Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) to keep the FAA from closing up to 189 contract towers and restore funding for the program in a short-term spending bill that passed Congress last week.
Each year, in addition to naming Laureates, Aviation Week honors outstanding cadets at U.S. military academies as Tomorrow's Leaders. The awards are sponsored by BAE Systems. This year, four cadets were named and recognized at the Laureates gala by Aviation Week President Greg Hamilton.
The final chapter has apparently opened in the turf war among national security agencies over which should control the most prominent weapon system in use since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Thales Alenia Space, the prime contractor for 24 second-generation Globalstar communications satellites, says it could conclude a deal with the mobile satellite services provider before summer for six additional next-generation spacecraft to be financed with backing from the French export credit agency Coface.
The UAE’s Yahsat Ka-band satellite system has been certified as compatible with the U.S. Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) Ka-band network, and the Boeing Commercial Satellite Services division will sell military and civil Ka-band for the Abu Dhabi-based fleet operator Al Yah Satellite Communications. Under the agreement, users of the Boeing-built WGS network will be able to seamlessly switch between the 10-satellite WGS network being deployed for the U.S. military and allied nations and Yahsat, says Al Yah Satellite Deputy CEO Masood M. Sharif Mahmood.
The NASA-led International Space Station mission management team has approved a March 25 departure and splashdown for the SpaceX Dragon Commercial Resupply-2 capsule in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, Calif. The unpiloted Dragon is scheduled to descend with just less than 3,000 lb. of research gear, including preserved medical specimens collected from the station’s astronauts, samples from biology and biotechnology experiments and equipment in need of refurbishment.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has completed flight qualification of the Merlin 1D engine, clearing a final hurdle in the planned operational debut of the more powerful engine on the upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket in June.
HOUSTON — Greatly enhanced gravity maps of the Moon, compiled from measurements made by NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) mission probes, have already made their way into the navigational models used by active lunar missions as well as those available to project teams preparing for unpiloted or future human missions, according to Grail project scientists.
SPACE TURNDOWN: Government spending worldwide on outer space peaked last year at $72.9 billion, but Euroconsult expects such spending to drop due to global fiscal austerity pressures, with improvement not expected before 2015.
The FAA says it will identify technical, political, legal and operational methods to protect aviation users from intentional spoofing and jamming of GPS signals in a report to be issued in September. Results of the one-year study, initiated by the FAA in September 2012 and carried out by a government/industry team, are critical to the agency’s planned reliance on GPS as the navigation and surveillance backbone of the next-generation air transportation system (NextGen) program.
NEW DELHI — India plans to loft its first navigation and timing satellite in June, the country’s top scientist says. The first satellite of the seven-spacecraft Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will be launched on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C22) from the spaceport at Sriharikota off the coast of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, according to the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), K. Radhakrishnan. Once launched, IRNSS-1 will be tested in orbit for nearly four months.
Federal law enforcement authorities arrested a former NASA contract employee as he attempted to leave the U.S. for his native China on March 16, charging him with lying about electronic media he was attempting to take with him. Bo Jiang, a computer imagery-enhancement expert who has been the target of whistleblower charges that he has taken “volumes” of sensitive NASA data back to China, was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
This gray powder from inside a Martian “mudstone” contains sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and carbon—all chemical ingredients for life as we know it on Earth and a major target of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. In a first for planetary science, the mission's nuclear-powered Curiosity rover drilled the hole at left, after a test run to the right, and transferred some of the powder to its internal chemistry labs.
Unwieldy U.S. military procurement continues to hamper the use of hosted payloads as a time- and cost-saving way to put sensors and relays into orbit, even with a hosted UHF link serving troops and sailors in Afghanistan and the rest of the Indian Ocean region. That hosted payload on the Intelsat 22 bird belongs to the Australian Defense Force (ADF) and has worked well since its launch a year ago on a Proton. The ADF paid $167 million for the 18 UHF channels and had them up and running less than three years after it signed the contract.
The deficit-reduction measure that went into effect March 1 cuts 7.9% from discretionary defense spending and 5.3% from non-defense discretionary spending. Surely, Washington's latest manufactured crisis will not do any serious damage, will it? Well, consider this:
With a U.K. commitment to increase its European Space Agency contribution 25%, the space industry is becoming a major economic driver in Britain. The nation's £1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) pledge to ESA programs is part of a larger €10-billion ($13 billion) spending package the agency approved last November, making the U.K. the agency's third-largest funder—after France and Germany—and positioning Astrium U.K. to reap the benefits.
