SPACE CHIEF: Steven MacLean, Canada’s chief astronaut and one of the first six Canadian astronauts chosen, will take over the helm of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) following his appointment by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. A physicist and two-time space shuttle astronaut, MacLean takes over from career public servant Guy Bujold, who became interim CSA president in January after former Telesat Canada CEO Laurier Boisvert left the post nine months into an expected three-year term (Aerospace DAILY, Jan. 11).
Northrop Grumman said Sept. 2 it has reached a critical milestone for Phase 3 of the U.S. military’s Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program by demonstrating tactically significant power and beam quality for more than 5 minutes.
Boeing is well placed to pick up another small C-17 order after South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Committee approved a plan to buy “large transport aircraft” for about 700 billion won ($620 million). The large transport aircraft will be used for sending Korean peacekeepers or disaster relief materials overseas. South Korea’s latest peacekeeping troop deployment, an army battalion sent to southern Lebanon in July 2007, used chartered Korean Air flights.
RESEARCH PARTNERS: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne announced Sept. 2 a new research partnership with the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The Research Collaboration Protocol agreement will cover cooperative activities and projects to strengthen the research, education, innovation and strategic missions of both organizations. The agreement also calls for the establishment of the Venture Challenge, which will evaluate Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne’s intellectual property for business opportunities.
Engineers at the University of Arizona and other Phoenix Mars lander facilities are troubleshooting a problem in the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) system designed to detect organics on Mars. They are trying to diagnose intermittent interference in the tubes that transfer gases generated by heating a soil sample into the instrument’s mass spectrometer. Vapors from all samples baked to high temperatures have reached the spectrometer, but data show that the gas flow has been erratic.
NAVY King Nutronics Inc., Woodland Hills, Calif., is being awarded a $7,251,120 firm-fixed-price requirements contract to manufacture pressure calibrators to support the general purpose electronic test equipment weapons system. The work will be performed at Woodland Hills, Calif., and is expected to be completed by August 2013. Contract funds will expire before the end of the current fiscal year. This offer was not competitively procured. The Naval Inventory Control Point is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE
Brazil will spend $160 million by the end of 2009 to develop a nuclear-powered submarine aimed at protecting oil reserves found recently off the Brazilian coast, the defense ministry announced Aug. 29. It hopes the sub – Latin America’s first nuclear-powered vessel, according to The Associated Press – will be completed by 2020.
P-3 WINGS: The U.S. Navy has tapped Lockheed Martin and L-3 Integrated Systems to begin supplying replacement outer wing kits for P-3s grounded by critical structural fatigue. The Navy grounded 39 P-3s in December, and expects to ground another six to 10 a year. L-3 has received a $60.6 million contract to supply four outer wing kits by June 2010, and Lockheed $129.3 million to deliver 13 kits between March and December 2010.
YAHSAT CHANGES: Industry sources say the Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (YahSat) of Abu Dhabi has decided to modify the payload on one of two telecom satellites ordered from EADS Astrium and Thales Alenia Space to meet growing demand for high-speed Internet access in the Middle East and Africa. According to the sources, a large portion of the Ku-band payload on YahSat 1b will be switched to Ka-band, using a multiple spot-beam architecture. The two satellites already feature Ka-band payloads for secure military/government applications. On Aug.
DOUBLE DUTCH: Lockheed Martin confirms it has responded to a Netherlands’ request for information on the F-16E/F Block 60 as the Dutch evaluate alternatives to the company’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Lockheed says it provided information on a derivative of the Block 60, potentially putting the company in the unusual position of competing with itself. Prodded by parliament, the Dutch government in July launched another evaluation of options for its 85-aircraft fighter requirement.
CANNES — Workers are beginning to install equipment and systems at Europe’s new Soyuz launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, in a race to have the facility ready by the middle of next year. The new pad is needed to meet hot demand for medium-sized communications and Earth observation satellites and provide a backup for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher. Among users pressing for an early startup is Globalstar, which has booked four flights, plus four options, for a new fleet to replace its rapidly aging satphone constellation.
Sikorsky has begun flight testing the UH-60M Upgrade, the latest version of the Black Hawk and the first fly-by-wire transport helicopter for the U.S. Army. The first flight at the company’s West Palm Beach, Fla., test center lasted around 60 minutes and included hover, forward flight and a hover turn, Sikorsky says. The M Upgrade introduces a digital fly-by-wire (FBW) system with triple-redundant Hamilton Sundstrand dual-channel flight control computers and actuators, and BAE Systems active control sticks.
PARIS — The five RapidEye satellites were successfully launched by a Dnepr rocket at 1:15 p.m. local time from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The five identical satellites are designed to provide 6.5-meter resolution imagery. The spacecraft are primary intended for civil uses, including to support agriculture or to aid during natural disasters (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 29). RapidEye, like TerraSAR-X, is being financed as a public-private partnership, notes Ludwig Baumgarten, a senior representative of the German aerospace center DLR.
GAP FILLER: The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has begun awarding contracts for the first phase of its Rapid Eye program to demonstrate a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle (UAV) that can be rocket-deployed from the U.S. to anywhere in the world within two orbits to fill a gap in surveillance coverage. Boeing has received a $2.35 million contract and Lockheed Martin a $3.8 million contract for the initial conceptual design phase.
The U.S. has lifted sanctions against China Great Wall Industry Corp., the Chinese government’s international aerospace trading company accused by the Treasury Dept. in 2006 of allegedly supplying ballistic missile technology to Iran. Great Wall sells Chinese telecommunications transponders and other components and markets commercial launches on Long March boosters like the CZ-3B.
ANTICIPATING GUSTAV: NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is closing to all but essential support personnel because of the approach and expected landfall of tropical storm Gustav, which was expected to strengthen into a hurricane. All scheduled production activities have been canceled during the Labor Day holiday weekend. The center was due to close at midnight Aug. 30.
GLOBAL HAWKS: The U.S. Air Force has boosted its projected Global Hawk buy from 54 of the surveillance UAVs to 78 and funding for the extra aircraft is expected in the fiscal 2010 budget request, according to a program source. The additional aircraft are needed for two reasons. Air Combat Command has recently executed a series of force structure studies, leading the service to believe it needs more of the aircraft to provide the anticipated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance coverage.
MAN HOLE: The British armed forces continue to fall short of their “full time trained strength requirement,” according to the latest figures released by the government. The target is 179,160 personnel, but as of July 1 the actual figure stood at 173,370, a shortfall of 3.2 percent. The navy is 1,220 personnel short of its 36,140 requirement, the army is 3,500 short of its 101,790 requirement, and the air force is down 1,070 on its required strength of 41,230.
GEORGIA COOKING: The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a Sept. 9 hearing on the conflict between Russia and Georgia and its implications for U.S. policy. Witnesses slated to testify include: Eric Edelman, the Defense Department’s under secretary for policy; Daniel Fried, from the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; and the directors of operations and intelligence for the Joint Chiefs staff.
RASCOM REPLACEMENT: Thales Alenia Space says it is close to signing off on a contract for a satellite to replace Rascom-QAF1, which was left with barely two years of life after a late December launch because of a helium leak (Aerospace DAILY, Feb. 7). Engineers said an inquiry team traced the failure to a welding flaw in the pressure regulation system.
Lockheed Martin’s short takeoff and vertical landing F-35B Joint Strike Fighter has opened doors associated with the lift system for the first time in flight. The first F-35B, aircraft BF-1, resumed flight testing Aug. 27 after a four-week break to troubleshoot a problem. The various lift-system doors will be opened over a series of flights to check the effect on aircraft handling. The first doors to be opened in flight were those under the rear fuselage that cover the three-bearing swivelling nozzle. The nozzle itself was not deployed.
ANGOLAN SATELLITE: The government of Angola has approved a $328 million project to build and launch a national communications satellite, reinforcing a trend that has seen an increasing number of fast-growing developing nations — notably Nigeria, Venezuela, Kazakhstan and Vietnam — finance satcom spacecraft for their national needs. According to the local news service, Angop, the country’s ministry of posts and communications selected Russia’s Rosoboronexport to build, launch and operate the spacecraft, called Angosat.
