PARIS — The European Space Agency (ESA) is poised to award EADS Astrium a contract to develop a data relay satellite network that will permit real-time download of the agency’s remote-sensing data.
LOOPHOLE LEGISLATION: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) plans an attempt to free NASA from a requirement that it fund the moribund Constellation Program of exploration spacecraft, which was killed in the new NASA authorization act Nelson helped draft. Under current appropriations language, NASA must fund Constellation until a new appropriations bill for the agency passes Congress. NASA’s inspector general finds the agency will spend as much as $575 million by Sept. 30 on Constellation projects it otherwise would have scrapped.
CHINESE GATES: Defense Secretary Robert Gates left China last week with assurances that the country’s leaders are committed to further bilateral relations with the U.S., but Pentagon officials also came away with newfound doubt over relations between Chinese politicians and military leaders. Gates’s visit was punctuated by the flight test of the stealthy Chinese J-20 fighter prototype (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 12). “The [Chinese] civilian leadership seemed surprised by the test and assured me that it had nothing to do with my visit,” Gates later told accompanying reporters.
The U.S. Air Force is studying a hypersonic road map that calls for development of ambitious high-speed weapons and a high-speed reusable flight research vehicle (HSRFRV), slightly larger than the Darpa-led Blackswift Mach 6 demonstrator canceled in 2008. Both high-speed elements emerged from a government-industry workshop meeting in Washington Dec. 8-9, and covered development priorities designed to maintain the recent impetus in hypersonics gained with the X-51A WaveRider, X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle and HTV-2 hypersonic test.
After a half-decade’s worth of disappointments, the SBInet program—a controversial and problem-plagued suite of sensors, cameras and radar arrayed along the southwestern U.S. border—has been canceled. The program was put on hold by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano last March after a series of missteps and delays getting the program’s technologies off the ground, but the cancellation announcement—while hardly a surprise—comes with a huge question mark: what’s next in border security?
NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program allowed $2.7 million in unallowable and unsupported costs for travel, equipment and other expenses in 2008, according to a audit by NASA Inspector General (IG) Paul Martin.
POLISH PRESSURE: Human factors, including psychological pressure on the pilot to take unjustified risks in poor weather, were cited by the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee in its final report on the Polish air force Tupolev Tu-154M crash on April 10, 2010, which killed all 96 on board, including Poland’s president and much of the military high command. No evidence of aircraft, engine or system failures before the collision was revealed, the report says.
GENOA, Italy — The European Commission and Italy have agreed on the size of disbursements arising out of a dispute regarding the improper use by the Italian government of state development aid for two AgustaWestland aircraft. The ruling on the two programs — the A139/AW139 helicopter and the BA609 tilt-rotor — could have broad repercussions for Europe’s aerospace industry.
LONDON — Britain’s parliamentary defense committee plans to take a closer look at the government’s Strategic Defense and Security Review after raising concerns about the process before the document was released in October. On the eve of the SDSR’s publication, the committee warned that the review may fail to resolve all the questions it was supposed to address. Now, the committee notes it will hold a “major new inquiry into the outcomes of the [SDSR] within the wider context of the National Security Strategy.”
TAX HIKE: The 45% increase in corporate taxes that Illinois’ Democratic leadership, acting in a lame-duck session, agreed to on Jan. 12 as part of a budget-balancing package will not have an appreciable effect on the Boeing Co., a company official says. While Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago from Seattle in 2001, the company does not have a manufacturing presence in the state. Since state taxes tend to be tied to a physical presence in a state and sales are attributable to operations in a state, the increase “is not significant,” the official says.
Paris And Washington — Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of Galaxy 15, the wayward “Zombie Sat” that terrorized telecom satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought under control late last month. Galaxy 15 currently has its payload turned off. It is expected to arrive at 93 deg. W. Long. on Jan. 15 for a complete checkout, including validation of three command & control software patches uploaded in December to ensure the incident will not recur, company officials say.
LONDON — Cobham plans to consolidate its operations at several facilities, closing some locations and reducing headcount as part of an extensive cost-savings program. The company this year expects to generate ₤30 million in savings, and ₤65 million in cost reductions are set to be generated from 2013 on. The moves will see most of the company’s work located at 14 sites, although some specialist facilities may remain.
ARLINGTON, Va. — It appears the U.S. Navy has addressed two big question marks for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fleet — how to replace key module sets that handle littoral and submarine threats, which are two of the key missions for the ship.
The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off, vertical landing (Stovl) variant of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter may not complete flight sciences testing and shipboard integration until late 2016, even if current efforts to resolve design problems are successful, according to the latest report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test & Evaluation.
PARIS — Astrium says it will report solid results for 2010 but predicts the going will be more difficult this year. The EADS space unit saw sales rise 4% last year, to around €5 billion ($6.6 billion), and orders leap 43%, to €6 billion (discounting a multiyear bulk order for 35 Ariane 5 rockets), belying a warning in January 2010 that activity was likely to soften. No hint of profitability was given, but EADS CEO Louis Gallois says underlying profitability across EADS was still not up to company objectives — 10% of revenues.
A Russian Zenit 2SB with a Fregat-SB upper stage is set to launch Russia’s first domestic geostationary weather satellite since the Geostationary Operational Meteorological Satellite (GOMS-1) debut on a Proton in 1994. The new spacecraft, designated Electro-L, will fly from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Jan. 20 and will initially be targeted on the orbital slot at 76 deg. E. Long, according to Russian press reports. Eventually it will move west to provide weather data for Europe as far east as the Ural Mountains.
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LOS ANGELES — The X-51A Waverider scramjet experimental vehicle’s second attempt at broaching the Mach 5 hypersonic threshold will slide to late March, following delays caused by test range and aircraft availability. Despite the two-month shift from its original January test target, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)-led program remains cautiously optimistic that the three remaining X-51A vehicles can be launched by the end of 2011.
HOUSTON — NASA Deputy Chief Astronaut Frederick “Rick” Sturckow will at least temporarily assume training duties for STS-134 Commander Mark Kelly, whose wife, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D), was among those critically wounded during the Jan. 8 shooting rampage at a political event in Tucson, Ariz. Kelly, who urged NASA to take the measures that led to Sturckow’s assignment as backup commander, hopes to resume his preparations and lead the 14-day flight, which has been rescheduled from an April 1 liftoff to April 19.
Technical problems with Lockheed Martin’s F-35B Joint Strike Fighter variant that prompted Defense Secretary Robert Gates to put the program on a two-year probation “will soon be resolved,” says U.S. Marine Corps Commandant James Amos.
Space Adventures has secured three seats for sale on upcoming Soyuz missions to the International Space Station, the company announced Jan. 12. The flights, which are expected to cost upward of $35 million apiece, will be available beginning in 2013, company spokeswoman Stacy Tearne says.
NEW DELHI — Indian Defense Minister A.K Antony says the defense ministry’s new, more liberal offset policy will not be applicable to the country’s largest defense procurement, the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), quashing the hopes of many vendors. Program offsets require foreign vendors to provide work for Indian industry up to a certain percentage of the program’s value. The $11 billion MMRCA project was viewed as a potential major boost to India’s still-maturing defense industry.
BEIJING — China’s Avic Defense will use rapid prototyping centers like the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for future military aircraft developments, with the aim of overcoming what it says are inefficient production processes. The prototyping centers are being set up at the fighter plants at Shenyang and Chengdu, the latter of which has just begun test flying the large J-20 combat aircraft.
The U.S. Navy took delivery in January of 10 newly configured P-3C Orions installed with an upgraded acoustic system — the Acoustic Receiver Technology Refresh (ARTR) — that enhances the aircraft’s ability tenfold to receive and analyze sonobuoy data, a basic P-3C mission requirement. The upgrades will help bridge the technology gap between the Orion and the service’s next generation maritime patrol and anti-sub warfare (ASW) aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon, creating a more common and efficient fleet.
