Despite NASA being an early pioneer in the field of cloud computing, the agency’s cloud-based systems and data could be at risk due to weaknesses in its IT oversight, according to the agency’s Inspector General (IG).
FRANKFURT — EADS has decided to make significant changes to its corporate structure and put the entire company under the Airbus brand. The board of directors followed a proposal put forward by CEO Tom Enders to change the company’s name to Airbus Group. Defense and space units Cassidian and Astrium will be merged and called Airbus Defense and Space. Eurocopter also will lose its current brand and be re-launched as Airbus Helicopters.
EADS has decided to make significant changes to its corporate structure and put the entire company under the Airbus brand. The board of directors approval followed a proposal put forward by CEO Tom Enders to change the company’s name to Airbus Group. Defense and space units Cassidian and Astrium will be merged and called Airbus Defense and Space. Eurocopter also will lose its current brand and be re-launched as Airbus Helicopters.
PARIS — The launch manifests of NASA’s two commercial cargo service providers will bump up against one another in December when Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corp. are slated to send competing rockets and spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA says both missions were intentionally scheduled for the end of 2013 in anticipation that one will experience delays in meeting target launch dates.
LOST ALLY: Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver is losing a key ally in her ongoing battles with more traditional NASA management. President Barack Obama has named Beth Robinson, NASA’s chief financial officer, as undersecretary of energy, that department’s No. 3 post. A Ph.D.
FRANKFURT — Berhard Gerwert is expected to be named as the CEO of EADS’ new joint defense and space unit. Industry sources tell Aviation Week that the current CEO of EADS defense division Cassidian will run the joint entity. The future of Astrium’s current CEO, Francois Auque, is unclear.
EADS’s board of directors is scheduled to meet today to approve sweeping changes to the group that, if approved, will renamed the company Airbus Group and reduce the number of divisions from four to three. The new structure will merge EADS’s defense and space operations into one entity, which will be called Airbus Systems. Berhard Gerwert, currently head of EADS’s defense unit Cassidian, is expected to be named CEO of the new unit, industry sources tell Aviation Week. The future of Francois Auque, CEO of EADS’s Astrium space division, is unclear.
PARIS — Delays in the launch of three telecommunications satellites atop European, Russian and U.S. rockets will reduce projected 2013 earnings for Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest fleet operator by revenue.
NASA is revealing its most detailed assessment yet of the design challenges that are being tackled as part of its plan to develop and test the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle for human exploration from 2017 and beyond.
NEW DELHI — The launch of India’s GSAT-14 satellite aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D5) fitted with an indigenous cryogenic engine will take place on Aug. 19, a top scientist says.
France secured its two biggest export agreements in recent memory with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in July, including an €800 million ($1.05 billion) sale of two high-resolution spy satellites built by EADS-Astrium and Thales Alenia Space. The satellites are small enough to launch on a European Vega rocket and are said to be similar to France's twin Pleiades spacecraft, putting the UAE in an elite club of nations cable of taking high-resolution images of sub-meter-sized objects from space.
Earth and the Moon show two sides in these parallel images, both collected July 19 by the Cassini and Messenger spacecraft. In the image at left, Cassini was 898 million mi. away when its wide-angle camera caught the Earth system floating below Saturn's main rings. Also visible are the F, G and E rings, the latter two overexposed to show up better. The rings' shadows can be seen as “breaks” in the planet's bright limb. At the highest resolution, the Moon shows up in the image as a bump on Earth's right side.
Russia’s Progress 50 cargo capsule departed the International Space Station’s (ISS) Russian segment on July 25, opening a berthing port for the July 27 arrival of a replacement freighter carrying a NASA space suit repair kit among its nearly 3 tons of supplies. Progress 50, filled with trash and unneeded equipment, departed the station’s Pirs docking port at 4:43 p.m. EDT, destined for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
DENVER — Dextre, the multipurpose dexterous manipulator that rides at the end of the International Space Station’s robotic arm, will acquire some new tools and tasks by year’s end. Among the cargo tucked into Japan’s fourth H-II Transfer Vehicle scheduled for launch to the ISS on Aug. 4 is Phase II hardware for NASA’s Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), a testbed the size of a window air conditioner bolted onto the station truss that mimics operational satellites.
