The figure is lower than the $1 billion commercial crew spending level set by the House, and well under the $1.244 billion NASA requested for the coming fiscal year. Without that requested level of funding, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has said repeatedly, the agency won’t be able to meet its contract obligations to Boeing and SpaceX for launches of their CST-100 and Crew Dragon vehicles by the end of 2017, as planned.
The move, confirmed by Stratolaunch, follows indications made in April by the Vulcan Aerospace parent company that it is broadening the scope of the project to launch several vehicle types with the giant “Roc” carrier aircraft it is building in Mojave, California.
“The solar sail is looking great, and we just could not be more pleased with the way it turned out, especially with all the ups and downs the project has been through,” Project Manager Doug Stetson says.
Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist, who is currently visiting India, has held detailed discussions with his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar, and is understood to have made a proposal to sell Saab’s Gripen NG single-engine light combat aircraft to the Indian air force.
Manufacturer Raytheon says the RAM Block 2 is a significant performance upgrade that features enhanced kinematics, an evolved radio-frequency receiver, and an improved control system.
The U.S. along with 16 NATO and partner nations are participating in a Baltic Operations (Baltops) regional maritime exercise demonstrating various integrated military missions
To date, the air forces of Britain, Germany, Malaysia and Turkey have grounded their A400M aircraft in response to May's crash, even as France—the one nation that has continued to fly the A400M—reiterated its confidence in the airlifter’s safety and integrity.
NASA engineers believe they achieved a small but potentially significant advance in efforts to develop a supersonic inflatable decelerator and parachute for landing heavy payloads on Mars, despite some problems with a June 8 test.
Russia on June 9 announced refinements to its schedule for a half-dozen Soyuz crew and Progress re-supply launches to the International Space Station though the remainder of 2015.
An 11-terabyte dataset that combines worldwide environmental measurements and the latest climate-simulation models is available for the public to use in forecasting possible changes to temperature and precipitation patterns though the year 2100.
The move which comes four years after the United States decided not to procure the system, will see Meads replace Germany’s PAC-3 Patriots in the early 2020s.
CAE will take Flight Safety International’s place as the turn-key initial and recurrent simulator and live flight training provider for more than 600 pilots who fly the U.S. Army and Air Force C-12 (Beechcraft King Air), starting in fall 2016.
Amid revived and growing controversy about the relevance of U.S. Navy carrier strike groups, the service invested $4.3 billion on June 5 in the design, development and construction of the future aircraft carrier CVN 79 John F. Kennedy.
Always on the prowl for technology meant to keep sailors out of damaged or dangerous ship areas, the U.S. Navy may be able to count on a new piece of equipment being developed by Pittsburgh-based Sensible Machines.
NASA suffered a second setback June 8 in its drive to develop entry, descent and landing (EDL) technology for an eventual human landing on Mars, with the failure of a redesigned supersonic parachute on a high-speed deceleration flight test off the coast of Hawaii.
Rolls-Royce is increasingly optimistic it will receive funding for retrofit of upgraded T56 engines for the U.S. Air Force and Reserve/National Guard C-130H fleets following better-than-expected results from recently completed flight tests of a P-3 powered by a full shipset of the same modified turboprops.
The six-person International Space Station carried out a nearly 5 ½ half min. maneuver on June 8 to avoid a close pass of a fragment from a U.S. Minotaur rocket launched in 2013 that was to pass within 3 mi. of the orbiting science lab late in the day.
