LOGAN, Utah — Tiny cubesats, once a teaching tool to give engineering students hands-on experience developing simple spacecraft, are about to make the leap to serious science as a low-cost way to find and quantify deposits of water ice on the Moon for future human explorers to use.
U.S. Army officials are planning to reveal their downselect of candidates for building the service’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft next month; the decision had been expected this month.
U.S. Army officials are planning to reveal their downselect of candidates for building the service’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft next month; the decision had been expected this month.
MISSION OPS: NASA has awarded Lockheed Martin a $340.6 million extension of the Facilities Development and Operations Contract that supports the Mission Operations Directorate at the Johnson Space Center, including the Mission Control Center. The extension, effective Oct. 1, includes a two-year base period and a 12-month option that would bring the total value of the initial 2009 contract award to an estimated $1.3 billion, according to NASA’s Aug. 1 announcement.
A grass-roots advocacy group hopes to raise $250,000 on the Internet to fund early development of extraterrestrial “lawn darts” that would pierce the Martian soil to look for living organisms protected from the deadly radiation on the surface. The penetrators would piggyback to Mars on any lander headed there, then separate from its host head-shield during descent and plunge as much as 2 meters into the ground to position its life-seeking instruments.
LONDON — U.K. defense contractor BAE Systems says its sales will be weighted toward the second half of 2014 after seeing a decline of more than £800 million ($1.35 billion) in sales compared to the first half of 2013.
The U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division is considering using electromagnetic rails or other technologies to replace or augment legacy thrusting systems — Pratt & Whitney J-57 jet engines and 5-in.-diameter Zuni rockets — at two test sites. “Current supplies of jet engines at [the jet car track site] and rocket motors at [the supersonic naval ordinance research tracks] are depleting,” says the Navy in recent request for information (RFI) .
LONDON — The Spanish air force is looking into medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAVs in the coming years, and plans to commit to a European-built system in the 2020s. Requirements for a MALE UAV have been prepared and delivered to the Spanish defense procurement agency, officials say.
DONAUWORTH, Germany — Corrosion issues on the naval version of the NH90 military helicopter are now under control, according to senior Airbus Helicopters officials. Company engineers are working on solving these issues, which prompted the Dutch government to halt deliveries of its final seven aircraft.
