GENOA — Avio’s continued growth is reflected in its 2011 results, which improved from the previous year despite the difficult economic scenario in Europe. The Italian aerospace propulsion company, which is led by Francesco Caio, reached the €2 billion ($2.6 billion) revenue mark, improving by 14.5%, compared with €1.75 billion the year before. The company’s operating results also improved, to €380 million, versus €360 million in 2010.
The U.S. Navy’s only major satellite program, which is designed to provide unprecedented Ultra-High Frequency satellite communications to military personnel around the globe, has so far slipped through the round of fiscal 2013 budget cuts unscathed despite some development shortcomings. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Jan 26 that he was terminating the Air Force’s Defense Weather Satellite System because it was “premature to need.”
SPECIAL DELIVERY: The first of the retired space shuttle orbiters to go on display will arrive at its final destination April 17. Discovery is due to land at Washington Dulles International Airport atop a shuttle carrier aircraft, and be delivered to the National Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center at the airport two days later. NASA’s workhorse shuttle will replace the atmospheric test article Enterprise in the museum display.
HOUSTON — Applications for a place in NASA’s astronaut corps surged past the 5,100 mark on Jan. 27, as a midnight deadline approached for one of the nine to 15 estimated openings in the class of 2013. The space agency selected nine men and women from 3,600 applicants in 2009, the most recent astronaut class.
NASA has granted the Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego a pair of six-month contract extensions valued at $32.9 million for continued safety and mission assurance and technical support services at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The agreement provides support for the International Space Station, Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and yet-to-be-named programs managed from Houston by the space agency, according to a Jan. 26 announcement. The extension period begins May 1.
COLLISION: The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the Jan. 26 collision of a barge carrying Atlas V rocket stages with a bridge over the Tennessee river that caused part of the bridge to collapse. The 312-ft. vessel, which is owned and operated by Foss Marine, was carrying an Atlas V booster and Centaur upper stage for the U.S. Air Force’s AEHF-2 mission scheduled to launch in April, along with an interstage adapter for NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission slated to launch in August.
DATA DUMP: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to distribute some of the minute samples its Hayabusa probe returned from the asteroid Itakowa. The spacecraft, which imaged its shadow against the type-S asteroid as it approached in the fall of 2005, returned more than 1,000 asteroid particles measuring about 10 micrometers (0.0004 in.), despite control problems at its target. The tiny samples have been analyzed by Japanese scientists, and now will be available in a peer-reviewed opportunity.
NASA does not have adequate plans to deal with the significant likelihood that the International Space Station (ISS) may have to be abandoned at some point during the remainder of this decade, nor is it addressing safety issues with its plan to use commercial vehicles to deliver crews to the orbiting outpost, the agency’s outside safety review organization has concluded. In its 2011 annual report, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) sees “more than an outside possibility” that the ISS will suffer a loss-of-mission event during its projected lifetime.
LONDON — China’s plan to launch 12 more Compass navigation satellites and inaugurate their operational use this year is only one of several key satellite activities planned for 2012.
Boeing says the big news in pulse manufacturing is not limited to production ramp-ups in its 737 factories in Washington. It also is making news in manufacturing satellites on an assembly line in El Segundo, Calif. Boeing Satellite Systems has four identical Global Positioning System IIF satellites pulsing through an assembly line with 13 distinct manufacturing “post” positions as part of a U.S. Air Force contract with a total value of $1.35 billion.
Boeing CEO James McNerney predicts that more of the company’s military sales will originate overseas, as the U.S. defense budget comes under pressure. McNerney told analysts Jan. 25 that with “tough U.S. defense budgets,” the company sees “significant upside in the international defense market” for Boeing Defense, Space and Security (BDS). He forecasts that as much as 25-30% of revenues for the unit could come from international sales “in the next few years.”
GENOA — Even as France’s Safran considers a bid for it, Avio says it is still planning at least a partial initial public offering this year, one it had postponed from the end of 2011 due to Europe’s financial crisis.
NASA will aim for a March 14 air-launch of its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, spacecraft on a mission begun in 2003 to identify high-energy X-ray sources—including distant black holes—with unprecedented sensitivity.
The U.S. Air Force is embarking on an accelerated analysis of alternatives for a future defense weather satellite constellation after initiating the termination of Northrop Grumman’s Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS) contract.
A Jan. 24 DAILY story misidentified the EELV engine being offered at a discount to United Launch Alliance. It is the RS-68 engine, which powers the core stage of the Delta IV.
HOUSTON — The crew of the International Space Station joined with launch teams in Kazakhstan early this week for a series of preparations leading to the late Jan. 27 arrival of Russia’s first Progress resupply mission of 2012. The unpiloted space freighter, loaded with nearly three tons of dry goods, research gear, propellant, water and compressed air, is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Jan. 25 at 6:06 p.m. EST, or Jan. 26 at 5:06 a.m. at the desert launch site.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, long a center for sounding rocket science campaigns, is becoming a site for small satellite launches as well, according to NASA’s new chief technologist. Mason Peck, a Cornell professor who assumed a two-year assignment managing NASA’s open-ended technology-development effort Jan. 3, toured the venerable launch site on Virginia’s eastern shore Jan. 24, and found it a promising spot for smallsat work.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — While U.S. launch officials slowly make headway in their efforts to curb rising launch costs, some are calling for a better compromise between mission assurance and affordability as the Air Force studies a possible rate increase to 10 national security space launches per year.
A solar flare that erupted Jan. 22 has prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue warnings of a geomagnetic storm that will wash over Earth on the morning of Jan. 24, potentially upsetting power grids, navigation and satellites. For spacecraft, geostationary satellites are most at risk because their orbits at 22,300 mi. above the equator put them beyond the protection of the planet’s radiation belts. Satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) generally operate within the radiation belts.
President Barack Obama’s budget release will be delayed a week until Feb. 13, an administration official confirms. “The date was determined based on the need to finalize decisions and technical details of the document,” the official said in an email, adding that in keeping with efforts to rein in the federal deficit, the administration will not distribute paper copies of the budget. The administration is supposed to submit its budget to Congress on the first Monday of February. The Obama administration has met that deadline just once — in 2010.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) has sent an unsolicited proposal to United Launch Alliance (ULA) that would cut the price of RL10 rocket engines by 25%, and by almost half from the levels reached in summer 2010.
Launch industry managers worldwide will go after government markets as the industry continues its recovery from a downturn that has brought a reduction in the number of competitors in the market and forced the remaining players to restructure. While the reduction of launch vehicle operators and an increase in launch opportunities is driving recovery for the survivors, an expected decline in satellite purchases and rise in the number of launch vehicle operators down the road could fuel greater competition in coming years.
William N. Ostrove/Forecast International/www.forecastinternational.com
Although space assets play a vital military role on the battlefield, militaries are being forced to balance increased demand for satellite capabilities with tightening budgets. The current drive of governments worldwide to rein in spending will have an effect on military satellite procurement during the next decade.
