LISA PATHFINDER: Under an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA will supply the Disturbance Reduction System Package that will be part of ESA's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Pathfinder, set for launch in 2010 to demonstrate the technologies that the LISA spacecraft will use to measure gravity waves. Essentially it is a highly sensitive thruster system designed to counteract drag on the spacecraft from solar wind and other forces so true gravity measurements can be made.
ARMY R&D: Only 25 percent of the U.S. Army's budget goes to research, development and acquisition, compared with 38 percent in the Navy and 43 percent in the Air Force, Army boosters tell legislative aides. Senate Armed Services Committee staff say they are told this is because the Army is manpower intensive and personnel costs eat up a large part of its budget. Furthermore, the Army's overall share of Pentagon investment dollars is only 17 percent versus 33 and 35 percent for the Navy and Air Force, respectively.
The European Space Agency has contracted with the Russian Space Agency to acquire the first four Soyuz rockets for the new launch pad under construction at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launch vehicles will be built by Samara and operated by Arianespace. ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says he hopes to have the vehicles and the pad ready for an initial launch by early 2009.
QUICK RESOLUTION: Negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic over U.S. plans to base ground-based midcourse ballistic missile interceptors and a high-powered radar site on their respective territories should not take years to finalize, says John Rood, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation. "There doesn't appear to be any instrumental obstacles," he says. Poland has sent a delegation to Washington this week for a second round of talks. The countries will continue their discussions even as Russian and U.S.
GREEN SPACE: Pete Geren, the acting U.S. Army secretary who is on his way to Senate confirmation for the full position, says he is not satisfied that current Defense Department management structures adequately support Army space interests. "There are opportunities for improvement," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing June 19.
EDWARDS LANDING: The STS-117 crew piloted shuttle Atlantis to a 12:49 p.m. PDT landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on June 22 after poor weather at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) forced the cancellation of a landing attempt there for the second straight day. The landing at Runway 22 brought to a close a 5.8-million mile orbital mission that continued assembly of the International Space Station. NASA plans to return the orbiter to KSC by early July, carried piggyback on a Boeing 747.
ORS EARMARKS: Lawmakers seem intent on forcing the Pentagon to produce so-called operationally responsive space (ORS) platforms and services. The House last month passed a bill that said lawmakers there still believe a majority of the Defense Department's space-related request goes to acquisition of existing space systems -- not the low-cost, rapid-reaction payloads, busses, spacelift and launch control capabilities that Congress has sought for years.
DEEPWATER REDUX: Talks between the U.S. Coast Guard and Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman that has been leading the Deepwater recapitalization effort, are supposed to wrap up this week. The Coast Guard plans to take on lead-systems integration responsibilities and cut back ICGS work, although the transition will take at least 18 months if not longer. ICGS will receive a 43-month contract for work that could have amounted to $3 billion under previous estimates for the second phase of Deepwater.
INSAT 4G: Arianespace will launch the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Insat 4G communications satellite in late 2008 aboard an Ariane 5 launched from the company's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The announcement, made at the Paris Air Show June 22, comes three months after Arianespace launched Insat 4B for ISRO. Starting with the Apple experimental satellite on Flight L03 in 1981, Arianespace has orbited 13 Indian satellites, which will make Insat 4G the 14th.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Donna Thomas at [email protected] June 25 - 28 -- Live Fire Test & Evaluation Conference, SPAWAR Systems Center Charleston -- Naval Weapons STation, Goose Creek, S.C. For more information call (703) 522-1820, fax: (703) 522-1885 or go to www. ndia.org. June 26 - 28 -- 20th Annual Solid State and Diode Laser Technology Review, Sponsored by Directed Energy Professional Society, Albuquerque, N.M. For more information call (505) 998-4910, fax: (505) 998-4917, www. deps.org.
HUNTER FRUSTRATED: One of former House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter's (R-Calif.) continuing "frustrations" about the Defense Department is that warfighters in the field still must become "supplicants" to higher-ranking acquisition officials to get what they need for the field.
The Bush administration and that of outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair are signing -- and still hammering out details of -- a U.S.-U.K. treaty that would eliminate the need for export licenses between the countries over certain defense and counter-terrorism trade.
A National Reconnaissance Office imaging satellite program thought to be called Misty was recently cancelled after drawing major criticism from key lawmakers. Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, cancelled the Lockheed Martin program after protracted technology problems and cost issues, according to an industry consultant. Lawmakers have quietly criticized it for years, with leading intelligence Democrat Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) venting frustration in late 2004.
A recent RAND report questions the ability of the U.S. Army's Apache helicopter to execute and survive deep-strike missions, but service officials and industry analysts say the proposed Block III improvements should address those concerns. The Army had envisioned "Apache helicopter attacks to a depth of 70-100 kilometers beyond the front lines," said the recent report. During Operation Anaconda, concerns arose about the survivability of the Apache in a low-altitude environment with a significant small-arms threat.
NO MEETING: Democratic leaders of the House Science and Technology Committee are "deeply disappointed" that President Bush has refused to meet with them to discuss what the lawmakers see as a mismatch between NASA's budget and the ambitious slate of tasks the agency has been given to perform.
PARIS - Sukhoi's Su-35, to be unveiled in August at the MAKS air show in Moscow, is the biggest revision yet of the company's heavyweight fighter. Here at the Paris Air Show is a demonstration simulator of the fighter's redesigned cockpit, dominated by two 15-inch diagonal LCDs - more glass area than any other fighter cockpit, including that of the Joint Strike Fighter.
In an effort to rebut U.S. Army test results from 1974 that call into question whether Boeing's Chinook variant would create too much downwash for Air Force combat, search, and rescue (CSAR) requirements, the company says it has more recent data that show the helicopter meets the criteria. Indeed, the company said, the HH-47 CSAR-X Chinook variant has better downwash metrics than its competitors - Lockheed Martin's US101 and Sikorsky's S-92.
Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), is looking to take the "F" out of the F-22 Raptor and the planned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and to recast the aircraft as much for their ISR capabilities, he told defense reporters June 21 in Washington. "The F-22, the F-35 - they're not 'Fs,'" he told the Defense Writers Group. "I'd like to [take] what we term today 'nontraditional ISR' and turn it into traditional ISR."
Leveraging advanced communications technology - and looking possibly to steal a page from the al Qaeda war playbook - the new U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) could be organized into a distributed network of people instead of an all-encompassing central headquarters structure, said Ryan Henry, the Pentagon undersecretary for policy. Using information technology, U.S. officials could spread out the command over the continent using connected distributive nodes, Henry said June 21 at a Pentagon briefing.
A technical paper co-authored by NASA Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden speculates that future lunar astronauts could pour liquid into a disc-shaped mesh to create a large telescope hundreds of times more sensitive than the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, NASA announced June 21.
ABL BOOSTED: Four prominent Boeing and missile defense spending proponents in the House are asking their colleagues on Capitol Hill to support the Airborne Laser (ABL) program. Reps. Norm Dicks and Rick Larsen, both Washington state Democrats, and Republicans Todd Tiahrt (Kan.) and Trent Franks (Ariz.) asked colleagues to tour the base ABL aircraft, which the Missile Defense Agency flew to suburban Washington, D.C., this week to lobby Congress as it digests fiscal 2008 defense authorization bills.
The Defense Department formally promoted Lockheed Martin's Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) - Unitary into low-rate production, the company said June 21. The U.S. Army also awarded the company a $125 million contract for production of the 200-pound GMLRS rockets. "We are very pleased that the Guided MLRS Unitary system is performing so well in Iraq," said Lt. Col. Mark Pincoski, Army product manager for precision guided missiles and rockets.
