PARIS—A company establishing a global commercial aircraft-tracking service says it will offer a piece of that capability, free-of-charge, to all airlines equipped with automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) terminals.
PLANETIQ is providing satellite payload hosting as subcontractor for Millennium Engineering and Integration Company under a USAF multi-award Hosted Payload Solutions contract worth up to $495m. PlanetiQ’s initial constellation of 12 low Earth orbit satellites will be fully deployed by 2017. ASRC FEDERAL INUTEQ has NASA contract worth up to $73m for IT and engineering support services for NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, CA.
Program officials from the U.S. Army and other services have begun building a formal business case for developing and procuring an advanced, medium-lift rotorcraft rather than upgrading the Sikorsky H-60 series again. The work is intended to support an analysis of alternatives (AOA) beginning next year and leading to a materiel development decision in fiscal 2017 on launching the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Medium program.
The U.S. Navy wants extra Pentagon money to cover the cost of building 12 Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) ballistic missile submarines, says Rear Adm. Joe Tofalo, director of the service’s undersea warfare division. The service has delayed the replacement of the Ohio-class SSBN as long as possible, but building the 12 ships at a rate of one per year, with the first boat going on patrol in 2031, will absorb “one-third of the shipbuilding budget,” Tofalo says, citing a Center for Naval Analyses study that estimated the annual cost at $5-6 billion.
The U.S. Army, juggling conflict in the Middle East, a gradual drawdown in Afghanistan, a pivot to the Pacific, an Ebola outbreak in Africa and rising tension in Eastern Europe, continues its evolution beyond the days when the U.S. military was tasked to respond to one or two large-scale operations. The new Army Operating Concept, planned to be released at next month’s Association of the U.S. Army conference, is a plan designed to respond to multiple small-scale conflicts at the same time, says Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno.
HOUSTON — A challenging weather outlook loomed as SpaceX readied its fourth Commercial Resupply Mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for a liftoff early Sept. 20. The flight will kick off a busy six weeks aboard the orbiting science laboratory, as well as another opportunity for Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX to advance its Falcon 9 first-stage reuse strategy.
LONDON — Scotland looks set to remain the home of the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent after voters decided to remain part of the U.K. A record number of voters – around 84.5% of the electorate – turned out for the Sept. 18 referendum, with 55% of the vote, just more than 2 million people, answering no to the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country.
Satellite communications provider Globalstar and its partner ADS-B Technologies have successfully completed what Globalstar says is the most rigorous demonstration to date of dual-link, space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) services.
LONDON — Norwegian defense company Kongsberg has been contracted by the U.S. Navy to test-fire its Naval Strike Missile (NSM) from a Littoral Combat Ship. The weapon tests will be funded under the Foreign Comparative Testing program, and have been requested by the Navy to prove the weapon can engage a surface target at ranges of out to 100 nm.
HOUSTON – NASA faces challenging cost, sustainability and utilization issues as it strives to extend operations of the six-person International Space Station (ISS) from 2020 to 2024, an Inspector General’s audit says. The audit foresees higher-than-projected annual operating expenses, a decline in solar power availability aggravated by a gap in the ability to launch large critical spare parts, and troubles with ranking research priorities and encouraging outside experiments. The space
