There's good news and bad news for U.S. space exploration and exploitation, now that the election results are in. The good news is that the bipartisan space policy hammered out with a lot of angst over the past four years will not need to be reviewed while a new president gets his feet on the ground. For now, at least, President Barack Obama's space policy, as modified by members of both houses in Congress, will remain unchanged. Work can continue as planned, without delay.
Decisions that determine whether a program can be successful are often made before the contract is even won. But conceptual design is still more art than science, practiced by talented engineers without the sophisticated, integrated tools available for development and manufacturing.
Chris Kubasik's rise through the upper ranks of Lockheed Martin could not have been better scripted by the Chinese politburo. Since joining the U.S. defense giant in 1999, the onetime partner at accounting giant Ernst & Young was rotated through a succession of senior management positions, including chief financial officer and leader of the company's Electronic Systems business. Two years ago, Lockheed Martin telegraphed that Kubasik would be the successor to Chairman and CEO Robert Stevens by naming him president and chief operating officer.
The House this week approved a bill to extend for two years an indemnification program allowing the government to share the cost with industry against injuries or property damage suffered by the public in a commercial space launch.
NASA’s Kepler planet-finder has started an extended mission that could last as long as four more years, after finding more than 2,300 candidate extra-solar planets in its 3.5-year primary mission by measuring the faint flickers of distant stars. The candidate list, which must be confirmed by Earth-based observations, includes “hundreds” of planets that are roughly the same size as Earth. A prime objective of the extended mission will be to find a true Earth analog in terms of size, star type and orbit.
The U.S. and Australian militaries have agreed to place two key U.S. space systems in Australia. A U.S. Air Force C-band space-surveillance radar – which can track up to 200 objects a day and can help identify satellites, their orbits and potential anomalies – will move from Antigua to Western Australia in 2014 and will increase coverage of space objects in the Southern Hemisphere, the Pentagon says. It will be the first low Earth orbit space surveillance network sensor in that hemisphere and will help track “high-interest” launches from Asia.
NASA and the European Space Agency have demonstrated the use of an experimental interplanetary internet to communicate with a small rover based in Germany, with commands issued by a U.S. astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
PARIS — Despite budget pressures at home, the U.K. plans to invest £1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) in European Space Agency (ESA) programs during the next five years, a 25% increase over current spending aimed at attracting more high-tech jobs and strengthening the U.K.’s position as a global player in satellite and telecommunications technology development.
GREENBELT, Md. — The U.S.-Japanese Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM), a complex environmental-monitoring spacecraft with the potential to improve forecasting of the trajectory and strength of hurricanes, is set to enter the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center this week as it moves toward launch as early as February 2014.
Loral Space & Communications Inc. is cooperating with its principal Canadian ownership partner in Ottawa-based Telesat for a potential initial public offering, Loral CEO and President Michael Targoff told a Nov. 9 shareholders teleconference.
South Africa is placing a lot of emphasis on space - it now forms part of its Department of Science and Technology's 10-year innovation plan and the country also has a national space strategy.
PARIS — Members of the French parliament say Europe’s Arianespace launch consortium is ill-prepared to lose any commercial Ariane 5 business to competitors in Russia, China, India or the U.S., where startup Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is making a splash with its low-cost Falcon 9 rocket.
