Congressional staffers have held preliminary meetings on updating the legislative underpinnings for the U.S. civil space program, but it’s clear nothing will be decided until the voters choose who’ll be running the program — and the rest of the government — in the upcoming election.
The Obama administration is nearing the final and most contentious phase of its massive export control reform — telling Congress what items it ultimately plans to transfer from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) to one controlled by the Commerce Department. By the end of the year, congressional aides are anticipating the administration will detail how it will transfer two key aerospace categories of products from the USML controlled by the State Department to the Commerce list.
HOUSTON — Working ahead of schedule, astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully grappled and berthed the unpiloted SpaceX Dragon re-supply capsule early Oct. 10, less than 60 hr. after the freighter lifted off. The three-member crew was scheduled to enter the supply ship on Oct. 11, or possibly late Oct. 10, for a 17-day, 2,675-lb. cargo swap (See charts pp. 6-8). The SpaceX mission marks the first cargo flight under the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company’s $1.6 billion, multi-mission NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract.
INTELSAT 23: Intelsat and launch provider International Launch Services are preparing for the launch of the Intelsat 23 satellite aboard a Proton M rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on Oct. 14 at 2:37 p.m. local time. Separation of the satellite is scheduled for approximately 9 hr. and 30 min. after liftoff. Intelsat 23 is scheduled to start service at 307 deg. East longitude in 2012, replacing the Intelsat 707 satellite.
HOUSTON — SpaceX is sorting through a first-stage Falcon 9 engine anomaly that occurred when the two-stage booster lifted off for the International Space Station on Oct. 7 under a $1.6 billion NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract that signals the restoration of U.S. cargo delivery and return capabilities lost with the space shuttle’s 2011 retirement.
A new mid-year report from Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies (TPC) study reveals that the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry remains resilient, even as potentially deep cuts to Pentagon spending draw closer. Boeing held on to its top ranking of 10 publicly traded contractors with revenues of more than $20 billion, raising its TPC score two points in the first half of 2012, to 89. And the next three companies, all pure-play defense contractors, also managed to boost their performances, reversing declines in 2011.
Cyberattacks have breached the Pentagon and sent businesses into bankruptcy. Still, it might take a cyberdisaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina to impel lawmakers to pass laws to help shore up the nation's infrastructure. The White House has proposed an executive order to address some of the problem, but Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, says more is needed. The Pentagon has a pilot program that will help private companies to work with the government to help them protect their own information.
NASA stalwarts across the agency have pulled up their socks and forged ahead with the new approach of sending humans to Earth orbit in commercial crew vehicles. But it has been a case of reality transcending preference, says William Gerstenmaier, who runs NASA's human-spaceflight effort. “As a government person, I kind of like the old way of doing business with these big government programs, and controlling specifications and not being in this new world,” he tells an International Astronautical Congress audience in Naples, Italy. “This is a little riskier for me.
