FORT WORTH, Texas — As competitors for the U.S. Army’s Common Infrared Countermeasures (Circm) program anxiously await the release of the request for proposals, Northrop Grumman announced here April 15 that it has integrated its Circm system with a mid-infrared transport fiber laser coupling.
FORT WORTH, Texas — EADS North America announced here April 15 that it will build three Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) 72X technology demonstrator aircraft with its own funds.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Industry is in a holding pattern as the U.S. Army has again delayed the release of a request for proposals (RFP) for its new Common Infrared Countermeasures (Circm) program, a replacement for its Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (Atircm) system, which recently ran into cost overruns and a critical breach of the Nunn-McCurdy statute.
COOLING OFF: NASA has decided that a problem with the International Space Station’s thermal control system can wait at least a month before astronauts will have to perform a spacewalk to fix it. The decision means that shuttle Discovery’s crew will not have to perform an unscheduled fourth spacewalk, and can proceed with plans to depart the orbiting laboratory early April 17 and make a planned landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center April 19.
LONDON — The first production standard Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicle was flown in the U.K. for the first time April 14 at the Parc Aberporth UAV range in Wales. Delivery of the Thales-developed Watchkeeper system is slated to start toward the end of this year. The military is due to start using the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system early in 2011.
An Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV D3), powered by India’s first indigenous cryogenic engine, was lost due to an apparent engine failure April 15, taking with it an experimental satellite. While the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, K. Radhakrishnan, says India plans to test fly another cryogenic engine within a year following corrective measures, the failure is being seen as a major crisis for ISRO.
PARIS — The successful launch of Europe’s CryoSat-2 ice monitoring mission is helping to clear a roadblock in the manifest of Russia’s Dnepr-1 launch vehicle. CryoSat-2 was launched atop a Dnepr-1 on April 8, after a six-week delay due to an upper-stage steering engine problem. When it goes into operation in the fall, CryoSat-2 will provide scientists with much improved and more comprehensive data on land and ocean ice sheets (Aerospace DAILY, April 9).
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — China’s human spaceflight program has new plans to use versions of its Tiangong docking-target vehicle as a testbed for regenerative life support and early space-science experiments in preparation for operating a full-scale three-person space station late in this decade. But Wang Wenbao, head of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, is ready to cooperate across the board on human spaceflight with NASA and other agencies, including using China’s planned 13-ton cargo vehicle to resupply the International Space Station.
The ability to operate in cyberspace — in particular to attack networks — has “outpaced the development of policy, law and precedent to guide and control those operations,” says Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “This policy gap is especially concerning because cyber-weapons and attacks [could] be devastating, approaching weapons of mass destruction in their effects.”
The ash cloud caused by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano that has grounded much of northern and central Europe’s air traffic also has caused military officials to stop flying. The U.S. Air Force says some of its European flights are not taking place. In particular, a decision by the U.K. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) to close off its airspace to all but emergency flights starting at midday April 15 led the Air Force not to operate its aircraft in Britain. NATS expects the restrictions to remain in place until at least early April 16.
Confusion over rules, or more accurately the lack of rules, to direct cyberwarfare is stymying efforts by the U.S. Air Force and Navy to develop tactical cyber-weapons. Such weapons must be able to analyze, identify and attack command and control as well as strike systems on the battlefield.
LONDON — Reviewing all big-ticket defense procurement projects and axing the “like-for-like” replacement of the Trident submarine-based nuclear deterrent are manifesto pledges made by the British Liberal Democrats. The last — and smallest — of the three main U.K. political parties released its election manifesto April 14. Britain goes to the polls May 6 to elect a new government. The manifesto also states the party would not go ahead with the “purchase of Tranche 3B of the Eurofighter (Typhoon).”
Lockheed Martin Space Systems’ first Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite is ready for delivery to Cape Canaveral, Fla., in preparation for a mid-2010 launch on an Atlas V launch vehicle.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — President Barack Obama will announce plans to continue work on the Orion crew exploration vehicle, perhaps as a lifeboat for the International Space Station, when he visits Kennedy Space Center on April 15. Also coming in the president’s first public address on his new space policy will be a timetable for deciding on an exploration architecture that would include a hydrocarbon-fueled heavy-lift launch vehicle to send humans on the first leg of trips deeper into the Solar System than low Earth orbit.
HOUSTON — NASA is considering a second extension of the shuttle Discovery’s mission to the International Space Station to carry out an unplanned spacewalk to replace a nitrogen tank assembly with a stuck thermal control system regulator valve. Ron Spencer, the lead station flight director, said April 14 that the management team plans to reach a decision by April 15 on whether Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson will carry out what would be their fourth mission spacewalk.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to use extra funding in the Fiscal 2011 NASA budget request to reduce risk on its Taurus 2/Cygnus commercial space cargo delivery system, perhaps including an instrumented test flight of the new stack before loading it with supplies for the International Space Station.
SKY HIGH: NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., said April 13 that it selected five companies to provide the agency with support for analytical and experimental research and technology development, primarily for aerospace vehicles. They are Analytical Services & Materials, ATK Space Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and Northrop Grumman Systems. The Structures, Materials, Aerodynamics, Aerothermodynamics, and Acoustics Research and Technology contract is valued at up to $400 million over five years.
U.S. Air National Guard F-15C Golden Eagles — upgraded with advanced, long-range radars that also will serve as electronic warfare jamming and attack weapons — are becoming part of the Air Force’s composite air dominance force that also includes stealthy F-22s stationed at Langley AFB, Va.
A commercially provided water generation system is now aboard the International Space Station as part of the STS-131 payload, a key milestone in a unique contracting arrangement between NASA and Hamilton Sundstrand Space, Land & Sea. The United Technologies Corp. subsidiary, best known as the manufacturer of NASA’s Extravehicular Mobility Activity suits, built the Sabatier Reactor System to provide the space station with an alternative chemical reaction water production facility.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Bruce Carlson says he plans to submit a research and technology investment road map with his Fiscal 2012 budget plan, and he hopes this will kick off increased spending in this area.
RIO DEAL: Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told Pentagon reporters April 12 that he expects to make a decision on the country’s fighter competition by May to send to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “And then we’re going to keep the ball rolling after that,” he said at the signing of a U.S.-Brazilian defense cooperation agreement. Among several bidders, Chicago-based Boeing is pitching its F-18 but faces headwinds against declared favoritism by Lula for the Dassault Rafale and further French cooperation. One criticism of U.S.
