Aerojet has shipped the first solid-fuel jettison motor for NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range, N.M., for the Pad Abort-1 test later this year. The jettison motor is one of three used in the event of a launch abort at altitudes up to 300,000 feet. ATK makes the other two motors — one for the abort itself and a second to control the vehicle’s attitude. In an emergency, those two are used to separate the Orion crew capsule from the Ares I launcher and maintain control.
President Obama’s long-term plan for human spaceflight will have an asterisk next to it until the end of the summer at the earliest, while a panel headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine reviews it at the request of the White House. Augustine, the 73-year-old former CEO of Lockheed Martin, will lead a mixed panel of NASA insiders and outside experts to review the Bush-era “Vision for Space Exploration” adopted after the Columbia accident in 2003.
ATOMIC FUTURE: “The conditions that might make possible the global elimination of nuclear weapons are not present today and their creation would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order,” according to the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. “As long as nuclear dangers remain, the U.S.
The U.S. Air Force will try again the night of May 7 to launch the TacSat-3 satellite for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory on a Minotaur 1 vehicle from NASA’s Wallop’s Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Launch of the $60 million satellite and its trio of experimental payloads — as well as two piggyback satellites — was to have come at 8 p.m. EDT May 5, but rain and low clouds barred the liftoff. Mission managers are hoping for better weather for a launch window that opens at 8 p.m. May 7 and extends until 11 p.m.
U.S. Navy officials are crafting an incremental upgrade plan for their developmental Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) drone that will allow it to operate in areas where increasingly vital satellite communications are denied.
Aurora Flight Sciences is preparing to fly a prototype solar-powered unmanned aircraft as a step toward development of an ultra-long-endurance surveillance platform. The 114-foot-wingspan SunLight Eagle is expected to fly early next week at New Mexico State University’s unmanned aircraft system flight-test center in Las Cruces, Aurora President John Langford says.
BETTER HAWK: Lockheed Martin has flight-tested a signals-intelligence payload and new wing design for its Desert Hawk III small unmanned aircraft, used by the British Army in Afghanistan. The new wing allows operations at high altitudes and temperatures, and reduces takeoff and landing speeds to make launch and recovery easier in difficult terrain, according to the company, which expects the improvements to become operational later this year.
The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to double in size when Russia’s Soyuz TMA-15 arrives on May 29, marking the first time all of the station-program partners are represented on board.
TAUSCHER TAPPED: More than a month after word first started leaking out about it, the White House announced May 5 that President Barack Obama is nominating Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) to be under secretary of state for arms control and international security. Tauscher is chair of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee. If confirmed by the Senate, Tauscher would serve as senior adviser to the president and secretary of state on arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The message to U.S. Army aviation is the same one echoing throughout the services, according to senior aviation leaders: do more with less. A parade of generals addressed a group here May 6 at the Army Aviation Association of America (Quad-A) symposium, and though the message was positive overall, there was also a sense of burrowing in before lean times.
Potential oversight issues could continue to keep Congress busy with sea-based ballistic missile defense (BMD), according to a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. “One potential oversight issue for Congress is how much technical risk there is in the Aegis BMD Program,” says the report, released last month.
DEAL DONE: Australia has signed contracts worth more than $350 million since mid-2008 for the majority of its planned Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyer combat system, according to Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon. The latest two contracts are a $40 million deal with Raytheon Missile Systems USA for a Very Short Range Defense-Air capability, and another with Adelaide-based Babcock Strachan and Henshaw Australia for the ships’ Torpedo Launch Tubes, worth $10 million. The tubes will be manufactured under U.S.
More U.S. senators are lining up against a plan — mostly promoted in the House — to split the $35 billion program for the next U.S. Air Force refueling tanker between competitors Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top two Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) a staunch Boeing supporter, all said this week they opposed a dual buy.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy’s program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, says that over the next two years the service has plans to field 2,000 unmanned air systems.
LONGER LEGS: Protonex Technology has received a $265,000 Air Force Research Laboratory contract to demonstrate a fuel-cell power system in the AeroVironment Raven, the U.S. military’s standard small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The company is already under contract to develop a production hybrid fuel-cell/battery power system for AeroVironment’s larger Puma AE “all-environment” UAV to be used by U.S. special forces. A previous version of the Puma flew for more than nine hours on a fuel cell — three to four times its endurance on batteries.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The U.S. Army is undertaking a new aviation study that will drive force structure as well as reveal a strategy for the service’s canceled Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH), Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. J.D. Thurman said here May 5.
FINLAND RADARS: ThalesRaytheonSystems has been selected to supply 12 Ground Master 403 air defense radars to Finland, and another two to neighboring Estonia. The 200 million euro ($265 million) order will include a midlife digital upgrade for five Finnish Teresa 22XX radars supplied by Thales that will extend their life by 15 years and reduce lifecycle costs. The order for the Ground Master 403 — part of TRS’s new family of fully digital 3D air defense radars — is the largest to date for the system, which also has been selected by France, Malaysia and Slovenia.
Australia will help develop upgrades to the Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patroller under an agreement that Canberra says is its first step toward buying the aircraft. The country’s defense white paper released last week (Aerospace DAILY, May 4) set out a plan to replace the Royal Australian Air Force’s P-3C Orions with eight manned aircraft, presumed to be Poseidons, and up to seven large drones, possibly Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawks.
Boeing subsidiary Insitu will begin production deliveries of its Integrator unmanned aerial system (UAS) in the first quarter of next year, to an unidentified launch customer under a contract to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) services. Now in flight-testing, the Integrator is a larger follow-on to the ScanEagle UAS, with which Boeing is providing ISR services to the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command. Australia and Canada also operate ScanEagle.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Bell Helicopter Textron acknowledged reliability problems with the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey here May 5, but the company says it is pushing hard to solve them. Responding to a recent critique made by the U.S. Marine Corps deputy commandant for aviation regarding the V-22’s reliability (Aerospace DAILY, May 4), Bell Executive Vice President for Government Programs Bob Kenney said, “I agree with him.” But while Kenney backed up the comments made by Lt. Gen. George Trautman, the Bell executive stressed the company’s efforts.
NEW DELHI — EADS Defense & Security has formed a defense electronics joint venture with engineers Larsen & Toubro (L&T), set to open for business next January in Talegaon near Pune in Western India. L&T’s defense engineering division makes Pinaka rocket launchers for the Indian Army, and a defense official said the Talegaon plant supports that weapons system.
