Mission managers now have settled in to wait for a brief signal Tuesday night that will let them know how the spacecraft fared in its intricately choreographed flyby.
For the U.S., Operation Talisman Saber provides an opportunity to train rigorously with an Australian alley that the U.S. says it will need to help secure the peace in the large expanses of the Asia-Pacific region.
Hovering above the action as U.S. Marines and Australian soldiers stormed the shore of Fog Bay this month as part of the Talisman Saber exercise was a DGI Phantom 2 Quadcopter capturing scenes from vantages previously unavailable.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott touted the defense relationship his country has developed with the U.S. and discounted any ill feelings that bond could cause with China
Deployments of 16 CubeSats from the Japanese segment of the International Space Station are planned through July 16, following the initial launchings of six Planet Labs small satellites July 13-14.
Airbus’s electric-powered E-fan demonstrator has made a successful crossing of the English Channel, but its efforts were beaten by an enterprising French aviator.
In the meantime, as representatives from Northrop Grumman and Boeing/Lockheed Martin – the two teams vying for the massive contract – wait on pins and needles, they are giving out little new information out about the secretive project.
Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said Monday the spacecraft will hit its 60 x 90-mi. box “almost at the center of it” and right on time.
“That is actually one of the parts we enjoy most: actually getting out there and working with the engineers, working with the people that are making it happen," says Bob Behnken, who handed off his NASA chief astronaut duties last week to become one of NASA’s commercial crew cadre.
This year’s Talisman Saber’s exercise is proving to be a showcase for the MV-22 tiltrotor, with the aircraft expanding the U.S. Marine footprint thanks to the Osprey’s range, speed and utility, U.S. Marine and Navy officials say.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is intervening in the U.K. defense ministry’s upcoming Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) by encouraging commanders to invest in more special operations forces, unmanned air vehicles and intelligence-gathering aircraft.
U.K. defense electronics firm Ultra Electronics is developing a new family of miniature passive sonobuoys that eventually could lend themselves to deployment from unmanned aerial systems.
Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries’ Spaceflight Networks is forging partnerships with four satellite data and spacecraft radio providers to expand the global reach of its young low latency data network specializing in the communications requirements of the surging small satellite sector.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected]. (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) July 7-9—Fourth International Space Station Research and Development Conference, Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts. For more information go to www.issconference.org/
STELIA AEROSPACE, CONSTELLIUM and CT INGENIERIE partnered to conduct R&D program to optimize and expand use of additive manufacturing (3-D printing) to produce large aerostructures. SINTAVIA was formed in Davie, FL, by Neff Capital Management to focus on aerospace and defense parts production using 3-D printing; Neff plans to invest $10m into new company, which also will maintain a metallurgical and metrology lab.
Pluto’s large moon Charon is beginning to reveal its face as the New Horizons probe draws closer to the July 14 flyby that will take it between the orbits of the two partners in this “binary dwarf.” Members of the mission’s science team say features resolving on the surface of Charon could be impact craters, and if they are, it could provide them with a keyhole into the moon’s interior.
The GPS IIF-10 satellite is slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for delivery into plane C slot 3 for the GPS constellation about 11,000 mi. above the surface of the Earth.
This year’s Talisman Saber exercise has some added twists – thousands of U.S. Marines are now in Darwin, Australia, representing a major buildup for the service in the region, and Japanese forces also are participating on a limited bases, officials note.
William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations, says NASA’s strategy is to use the ISS to spur the growth of a commercial economy in low Earth orbit that can take over with its own spacecraft while NASA moves on to the space around the Moon.
