Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), a sharp critic of NASA management and a vocal human rights advocate, announced Dec. 17 he will not seek re-election next year. Wolf’s decision opens the chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the U.S. space agency, and may allow closer space cooperation between the U.S. and China.
U.S. senators voted this morning to allow debate on the so-called Ryan-Murray budget compromise to end, a key procedural decision that permits the upper chamber to pass the deal and — assuming no differences with the House’s version — to go to the White House to become law.
Japan’s 2014 defense budget request asks for a 3% increase over the 2013 budget, continuing the sudden upward trend set in motion by right-wing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe upon his December 2012 return to power. The previous center-left government planned a 1.3% decrease in defense spending, which had already seen 10 consecutive contractions since 2003.
HOUSTON — The International Space Station’s mission operations team reported some progress Dec. 16 in its bid to manage the crippled thermal control system aboard the six-person orbiting science laboratory, but not enough to rule out unscheduled spacewalks this week to replace an external pump module housing the faulty flow control valve that is the source of the station’s ills.
The United Nations has begun operating a Selex ES Falco unmanned aircraft in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the first time it has used a UAV to support peacekeeping operations. The tactical UAV is being operated from Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, monitoring the border between DRC and Rwanda in support of the U.N. stabilization mission, called Monusco. U.N. peacekeepers are supporting DRC forces in operations against M23 rebels in the east of the country.
ABOARD THE USS FREEDOM — MH-60 Seahawk helicopters are key to the multi-mission capability of the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), but making the aircraft available to help swap out the vessels’ mission module packages presents a significant challenge.
KICKED UP: Scientists monitoring the lunar dust environment with NASA’s new Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) and two other spacecraft did not detect any initial effects from Saturday’s touchdown of China’s Chang’e 3 lunar lander and subsequent operations with its small rover.
Lockheed Martin is considering all options to continue increasing the production rate of the multinational F-35, though officials are not yet to the point where they must draw on company funds to forward finance the manufacturing line.
At least 74 Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are calling on the Pentagon to continue pursuit of a replacement USAF combat rescue helicopter (CRH).
BEIJING — China will launch a sample return mission to the Moon in 2017, officials say, while declaring complete success for the current Chang’e 3 mission to land and deploy a lunar rover. The next mission, Chang’e 4, will be similar to the current effort, using a backup spacecraft and rover, but will be adapted to prove technologies for the sample-return mission, Chang’e 5, says Wu Zhijian, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
Sikorsky has revealed the Unmanned Rotor Blown Wing concept it is designing with Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works under Phase 1 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s vertical-takeoff-and-landing experimental aircraft (VTOL X-Plane) program. Sikorsky has received a $14.4 million contract for the 22-month conceptual and preliminary design phase. Darpa plans to make up to four Phase 1 awards.
ABOARD THE USS FREEDOM — A core crew size of 53 appears to suit the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) Freedom just fine, says Cmdr. Patrick Thien, the ship’s commanding officer. “This is the right crew size and I think we’ve got the right mix,” Thien said Dec. 13 as Freedom approached the Navy port in Pearl Harbor en route to San Diego to finish off the ship’s first Western Pacific deployment.
With $37 million of congressionally directed funding to spend on improving energy efficiency, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is seeking proposals for fuel-saving technology demonstrations. The funding would help manufacturers and others conduct demonstrations to mature technologies to reduce fuel consumption, drag and weight to a manufacturing readiness level high enough for them to be considered for future acquisition programs, AFRL says in a new solicitation.
NASA evaluators have selected SpaceX to lease and convert historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center for commercial spaceflight operations, waiting less than 24 hr. after the U.S. Government Accountability Office rejected a bid-process protest from Blue Origin. In what has been referred to as the “battle of the billionaires,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk trumped Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who has bankrolled Blue Origin’s efforts to develop commercial orbital and suborbital human launch systems.
HOUSTON — A U.S. International Space Station astronaut on Dec. 13 expressed confidence in NASA’s spacesuits and spacewalk procedures if they become an essential part of a strategy to resolve a cooling system problem that surfaced earlier this week, forcing a shutdown of some non-critical electrical systems and science experiments aboard the six-person lab.
In a bid to boost the ability to track orbital debris that could endanger satellites, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is seeking methods for the uncued detection of objects in low-inclined low Earth orbit (LILO). The LILO project is part of Darpa’s OrbitOutlook (O2) program to bolster the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN) with new sensor, database and validation capabilities. The SSN is tasked with observing and tracking space objects.
