HELPING HANDS: What to do with a satellite that has reached the end of its useful life? Under the newly launched Phoenix program, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is hoping to demonstrate the robotic removal of space apertures and antennas from decommissioned satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Getting there, however, will require several steps.
The Senate Armed Services Committee indicates the U.S. may step up the use of drones and counter-artillery gear to counter attacks and artillery strikes against U.S. forces in Afghanistan emanating from inside Pakistan. In a strongly worded speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Oct. 21, committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) built on the concerns of Adm. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Pakistan supporting and providing safe havens for terrorist networks that are attacking U.S. troops.
BOUNCING BACK: The worldwide launch industry is recovering from its market downturn and should total $53 billion from 2011 to 2020, according to Forecast International. This would include production of 693 launch vehicles. Despite the uptick, there is still a dearth of commercial contracts. “The lack of commercial customers has forced launch operator United Launch Alliance (ULA) to focus almost solely on government contracts,” says William Ostrove, the report’s author.
The top priority for the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program is to deliver ships that meet the current requirements at or under the contracted costs, says Rear Adm. James Murdoch, LCS program executive officer.
PARIS — Europe’s first two Galileo navigation satellites reached orbit Oct. 21, separating from their Soyuz rocket upper stage less than four hours after blasting off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou. The mission also marks the first launch of a Soyuz rocket outside Baikonur in Kazakhstan or Plesetsk in Russia. It is the first of two planned additions to Kourou — already home of the Ariane 5 — which soon will be augmented by the Vega launcher as well.
LONDON — The German government is now formally acknowledging planned cuts it wants to make it its defense procurement program to go along with a broader reform of the armed forces, including scrapping its involvement in the Lockheed Martin-led Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) program. With the Pentagon already having signaled it would not continue with the tri-national missile defense effort beyond the development phase, the German government now says it will pass entirely on Meads. It will also reduce its Patriot inventory to 14 systems from 29.
NEW DELHI — An Indian air force (IAF) MiG-29 crashed into a mountain during a night-flying exercise in the northern part of the country Oct. 18, the second crash this month and the seventh IAF MiG fighter to go down this year. According to air force officials, two MiG-29s from western air command took off from Adampur in Jalandhar in northern India on Oct. 18 for an exercise in high altitude, and one of them crashed into a mountain at around 8:30 p.m. local time.
HARD BALL: It’s taxes, or else, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, taking a hard line when it comes to ongoing budget negotiations in the U.S. Congress. “This is all going to be determined by one word: revenues,” declares Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). Republicans, he says, have been unwilling to consider tax increases as a way to reduce the deficit by more than $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.
“Flying Humvees” being designed by AAI Corp. and Lockheed Martin have both made it through to the second phase of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Transformer program to demonstrate a fly-drive tactical vehicle. Transformer is a four-seater that must be able to drive off-road, survive small-arms fire, and rapidly reconfigure into an aircraft that can take off and land vertically and be flown without pilot training. Prototype demonstrations are planned for mid-fiscal 2015.
NASA will store some rocket engines, slow work on others and study still more as it struggles to squeeze the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) Congress has ordered into a flat, $3 billion annual budget for development. Early flights of the SLS will use surplus space shuttle main engines (SSMEs) and, as side-mounted strap-ons, the five-segment solid-fuel motors developed for the terminated Ares I crew launch vehicle’s first stage.
HOUSTON — Funding for NASA’s commercial crew space transportation services initiative appears headed for funding problems that could undermine the agency’s efforts to regain the independent U.S. human launch capability that lapsed with the shuttle program’s retirement earlier this year, members of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) warned Oct. 21.
CANADIAN UPGRADE: Canada has awarded a C$1.064 billion ($1.052 billion) contract to General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada for a comprehensive upgrade of the Canadian army’s fleet of LAV III combat vehicles. The upgrades will include a double-V-hull, more armor protection and energy-attenuating seats, all intended to provide crews with better protection against improvised explosive devices. A bigger engine and a more robust driveline and suspension will be part of the package.
NASA has re-targeted the launch of the trailblazing Npoess Preparatory Project (NPP) weather satellite for Oct. 28 — a one-day slip to accommodate engineering evaluations prior to installation of the payload fairing on the United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. The launch window at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., extends from 2:48 a.m. to 2:57 a.m. PDT, (5:58 a.m. to 5:57 a.m. EDT). The launch previously was delayed by two days for hydraulic and exhaust system repairs.
CSBA SUGGESTIONS: A new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments outlines three approaches the Pentagon can take as it trims its budgets in light of deficit-control efforts and August’s Budget Control Act.
SPACE WEATHER: A new forecasting model is allowing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve its predictions of space weather events — geomagnetic and solar radiation storms that send streams of charged particles from the Sun’s upper atmosphere — that may interfere with GPS signals and interrupt satellite communications, the agency reports. The new model allows forecasters to narrow the window when spacecraft and other systems might be affected by such storms to 12 hr. The old model was no better than 30 hr.
The future for the U.S. Air Force’s Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) fleet might not be replacement of the E-3s, or even a new radar, but pairing of the aircraft with UAVs to extend surveillance coverage. The technique is known as bistatic radar, where the transmitter (the AWACS) and the receiver (the UAV) are in different locations.
HOUSTON — A small international astronaut/planetary science team began a weather delayed, 13-day undersea asteroid analog mission on Oct. 20, as the participants descended to the Aquarius habitat below the Atlantic waters off Key Largo, Fla. Heavy rain and rough seas associated with a tropical depression prevented the originally scheduled start of the 15th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (Neemo) exercise on Oct. 17 (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 18).
In its zeal to launch more energy-efficient projects, the U.S. Navy ignored pricing and planning laws and policies, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) says. The service must do a better job of selecting, locating and planning certain projects that intend to generate power using photovoltaic (PV) methods (i.e., solar panels), according to the IG.
BACK ON: The first mission of a Soyuz rocket from its new launch pad at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana is targeting a liftoff at 6:30 a.m. EDT Oct. 21, after a one-day postponement to address a problem detected with ground equipment during fueling of the Russian rocket’s third stage. The Soyuz is carrying two Galileo navigation satellites.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), one of the freshmen members of Congress elected on a platform of reining in out-of-control government spending, is one of the top five recipients of campaign contributions from the defense industry. During the 2012 election cycle, Brooks has already raked in $73,970 from defense companies and their political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan finally wind down and the huge yearly Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) supplemental funding bills end, the services may have trouble funding the repair and modernization of their damaged or aging equipment. The end of OCO requests will save a huge annual sum. The Obama administration requested $118 billion for war funding for fiscal year 2012, down from $159 billion in fiscal 2011.
An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton rocket with a Breeze M upper stage placed ViaSat-1 into its geostationary transfer orbit Wednesday after a mission that lasted 9 hr., 12 min. The Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) spacecraft weighed more than 6.7 metric tons at liftoff, which came at 2:48 p.m. EDT from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Built on the SS/L 1300 bus for Carlsbad, Calif.-based Viasat, Inc., the satellite is designed to deliver total throughput of more than 140 Gbps from its operational position at 115.1 deg. W. Long.
As SPY-1 radar degradation problems on U.S. ships equipped with Aegis combat systems continue to bedevil the Navy brass, Naval Surface Forces leaders are preparing to launch a plan to better maintain the system and monitor its maintenance. Navy officials warned of the degradation problems with SPY-1 radars—as well as the cruisers and destroyers equipped with the Aegis system—last year, and the “casualty reports” (casreps) warning of further maintenance issues have continued to mount.
