Government/Military

With no breakthroughs in space propulsion or rocket design likely in the near future, a new family of launch vehicles developed for military payloads should satisfy all projected national security needs through 2020, according to a panel convened to examine the program. However, the federal government likely will be the sole user of these launch...

Lockheed Martin is poised to compete for some $8 billion or more annually in work that NASA will award in coming years, including the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) program, the company’s space business executives said. Competition for the upcoming CEV contract award pits Lockheed Martin against a team of Northrop Grumman as prime contractor and...

Changes in thinking, along with technology advancements, are helping the U.S. Department of Defense deliver satellite imagery to the units in the field more quickly, helping to improve operations and save lives, officials with the Pentagon said. "Imagery traditionally has been available only to a closed community," said Bill McDonald, director of technology development for...

A technology partnership between H.A.B.I.T. Research Ltd., a Victoria-based company that designs, develops and manufactures technology for wildlife research, and Swiss positioning technology provider u-blox, is making it possible for scientists to study the behavior of endangered species once thought too tiny to be tracked by GPS, raising the hope that many smaller species may...

NASA selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Rocketplane Kistler to demonstrate their ability to loft cargo and eventually crew members to the International Space Station (ISS). In the demonstration contracts, each firm would have to demonstrate various proficiencies, including a test flight in 2008. The demonstration contracts would be worth about $207 million for Rocketplane...

The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is committed to the commercial imagery sector and sees the opportunity to leverage that industry in the future, said the agency’s new director. “We are determined to work closely with the two primary vendors we have in the U.S. in commercial imagery and other associated entities to increase the...

NASA’s two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites offer a possible new approach to understanding how earthquakes work. Research recently conducted paints a clearer picture of how the Earth changed following the December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, the 9.1-magnitude event in the Indian Ocean which created a deadly tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people and...

The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to continue work on a nanosatellite development program, the company announced Aug. 2. Under the contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, Lockheed Martin will take the Autonomous Nanosatellite Guardian Evaluating Local Space (ANGELS) satellite program through critical design review. The program is...

The largest maize maze in the world has opened in York, England, and fittingly, the maze design was created using space age technology. Pioneering GPS equipment was employed to plot out the maze pathways. The system, based on the newly-released European Space Agency (ESA) EGNOS satellite, enabled the maze paths to be cut within 0.5...

With civil space initiatives being pushed with significant momentum, many projects have passed milestones that are making some industry executives re-evaluate this sector. Recently, Boeing Co. successfully tested a key laser component of the Transformational Satellite Communications (TSAT) system. This netting system involves links from one satellite to another using a laser beam, in a...