FUEL COLLABORATION: Boeing, Honeywell’s UOP refining specialist and Mexico’s airports and auxiliary services agency will collaborate on research for markets for Mexican-sourced sustainable aviation biofuels. Halophytic plants, which thrive in arid land and can be irrigated with sea water, will be the first research target. Boeing, Yale University and UOP are contributing to a study led by the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi that focuses on the sustainability of halophytes and the carbon lifecycle of biofuels.
ANTENNA BUY: Swedish Space Corp. (SSC) and French space agency CNES will jointly acquire and own two new 13-meter (43-foot) full-motion antennas to track satellite operations. The antennas, part of the PrioraNet worldwide network of ground stations operated by SSC, will be placed at two sites fully or partly owned or operated by SSC’s range in northern Sweden and Inuvik in Canada. The agreement will give CNES access to parts of PriorNet and provide SSC with extra capacity to sell to other users.
Much attention was focused on DigitalGlobe Inc. when the company successfully orbited its third imagery satellite on Oct. 8, but things have not been quiet at the other end of the high-resolution remote sensing duopoly. A day after the launch, rival GeoEye Inc. announced that it has closed on $400 million in financing. That was $50 million more than planned and would have been higher if the company had not begun turning investors away.
RELAXED OUTLOOK: Despite armor vehicle competition losses in the U.S., now being protested, and ongoing fraud investigations in the U.K. (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 2), BAE Systems’ interim statement last week said trading in the first half of the financial year was in line with management expectations. According to the statement, the company “continues to anticipate a year of good growth for 2009 as a whole despite a lower volume of land vehicle sales than in 2008.”
HACKING NASA: Despite having made some progress on improving its network security, NASA still remains vulnerable to cyber attack, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. “NASA networks and systems have been successfully targeted by cyber attacks,” GAO auditors say in a new report. (See charts pp.
The Obama administration is onboard a U.N. initiative to craft an Arms Trade Treaty, U.S. State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton announced this week.
IBEX MAP: A year after its launch, the science team for NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer will publish an all-sky map of neutral atoms that define the boundary between the solar wind and interstellar medium — the gas, dust and radiation environment between the stars. That medium reflects roughly 90 percent of cosmic radiation away from the inner solar system. The findings are causing some rethinking of how the interstellar cosmic radiation buffer works, says lead investigator Stephen A. Fuselier of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif.
PARIS — European Space Agency (ESA) leaders appear to be closing in on a solution for a Mars lander initiative that would reconcile technological and science goals with available budgets. A key objective of the planned 1.2 billion euro ($1.7 billion) ExoMars mission is to expand Europe’s orbiter expertise and allow it to master new technologies — a rover; entry, descent and landing system (EDLS); and a deep drill.
PATRIOTIC PAYPAL: The Pentagon is buying into PayPal software that was devised to fight cybercriminals from Eastern Europe and Russia. Its software makes connections between seemingly unrelated attempts by crime networks to defraud the on-line bill paying system. Now the software is being turned to spying and intelligence analyses. “We cannot talk about this domain,” says a veteran National Security Agency cyberwarrior. “It’s surprising to see this information in the open.
NOTE ALERT: Intelsat will issue a senior note offering to refinance debt and provide capital for other corporate activities. The notes will become due in 2019. A portion of the net proceeds from the issue, the value of which was not disclosed, will go to purchase certain oustanding 11.5/12.5 percent senior payment-in-kind notes that were due in 2017. Intelsat is heavily leveraged and pursuing an ambitious fleet modernization program.
MOSCOW, NEW DELHI and LONDON — At face value, this week’s annual Russo-Indian governmental commission on military cooperation was just an ordinary affair aimed at smoothing the often bumpy ride of bilateral defense collaboration. For Moscow, however, India is no longer an ordinary market.
NASA is partnering with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on a road map for the commercial reusable launch vehicle (RLV) industry that will identify the technologies needed to accelerate RLV development, improve reliability and turnaround times, and reduce cost.
IN MEMORIAM: Dr. Rodger Doxsey, head of the Hubble Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., died Oct. 13 in a local hospice after a prolonged bout with cancer. The New York native was 62. Doxsey oversaw Hubble Space Telescope science operations at the institute, working closely with the scientists operating the telescope, its designers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and the astronomers around the world who relied on the observatory for their research. Doxsey first came to the institute in 1981, nine years before Hubble’s launch.
NEW DELHI — The Indian Air Force (IAF) and Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) will conduct the first-ever air exercise between the two countries at the RAFO Base in Thumrait, Oman. The week-long bilateral air force exercise, code-named Eastern Bridge, runs Oct 22-29. Six single-seat Darin-I Jaguars from the Indian side will participate with RAFO Jaguars and F-16s. The two air forces are among the only ones that continue to operate the twin-engine Jaguar aircraft.
TALKS DOWN UNDER: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army chief of general staff, Gen. Chen Bingde, is in Australia for a week’s worth of meetings with top defense officials there, as well as tours of Australian facilities. This is the 12th Defense Dialogue between China and Australia, and the second at this level. The talks were upgraded to the chief of defense and secretary level last year “in recognition of the developing ties between the two militaries,” according to Australian defense officials. Australian Defense Minister John Faulkner claimed success early.
LONDON – Britain will be unable to afford its planned future equipment program, which is partly the result of serious flaws in how it goes about buying military hardware, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry-commissioned review of acquisition led by Bernard Gray that was finally published Oct. 15. Gray, a former special advisor within the ministry, was brought in to carry out the report by the previous defense secretary, John Hutton. Commissioned in December 2008, the review originally was expected to be released in June/July 2009.
DAEJEON, South Korea — As the International Space Station (ISS) partners make the transition from assembling the facility in orbit to operating it as a science and engineering laboratory, they are also beginning to discuss ways to hold down costs during the long-awaited utilization phase. “All partners are rethinking and working on how we can increase the benefits of the space station and decrease the costs,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency.
DAEJEON, South Korea — China is laying the groundwork to land astronauts on the moon, which would follow an ambitious lunar robotic precursor program that also could pave the way for the country’s first unmanned probe to Mars. Dong Nengli of the China Manned Space Engineering Program says his organization — which developed the Shenzhou human spacecraft and is planning an unpiloted orbital rendezvous and docking experiment in 2011 — is already looking beyond the planned deployment of a 60-ton Chinese space station in 2020.
U.S. and coalition forces have achieved some improvements in training Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), but there is still much work to be done in key areas such as equipment, contracting and logistics, a recent Pentagon Inspector General (IG) report says.
The Pentagon could spend $7 billion less annually on weapons procurement and research through the next decade if preliminary estimates — and some guesswork — hold true, congressional researchers told House Budget panel members Oct. 14 after reviewing the latest DOD budget plans.
Fixes added to new U.S. Air Force Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs) on the production line proved successful in a recent round of flight-testing, but challenges remain in retrofitting the changes onto existing weapons that contain faulty parts, according to the program executive officer.
MCLEAN, Va. — Fiscal 2011 and 2012 budgets will reflect the U.S. Navy’s commitment to energy reform, according to Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations. Roughead, who addressed the Office of Naval Research’s Naval Energy Forum here Oct. 14, said that if the Navy wants to “pursue promising research, it’s going to take money.” The next two budget cycles will see a “clearer focus and more resources being applied to energy and where we as a Navy need to go,” he said.
