The federal space sector faces a challenge as budget trends point to other priorities and future budget increases appear limited with the current economy and the steadily declining discretionary spending, TASC senior engineer Gary Oleson writes in a March 17 op-ed for Space News. To address this challenge, Oleson writes the sector must choose to either reduce […] More

Lockheed Martin’s advanced technology center has demonstrated robotic applications for deep space research through coordinated control by astronauts and ground-based operators. The company worked with NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station to operate the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Re-orient, Experimental Satellites robots by using a three-dimensional interface, Lockheed said Tuesday. Nelson Pedreiro, the center’s […] More

A NASA spacecraft carrying a Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.-built weather radiometer has been placed in orbit to start measuring rainfall and snowfall levels across the world. The Global Precipitation Imager observatory satellite is spinning at 32 revolutions per minute and works to map global precipitation every three hours, Ball Aerospace said Tuesday. “GMI is […] More

Raytheon has signed a cooperative agreement with PASSUR Aerospace to jointly develop analytics-based tools for airline, airport and control tower operators to manage air traffic data. The alliance seeks to combine Raytheon’s ATM systems and PASSUR’s decision support software that is built with business intelligence and predictive analytics technology, Raytheon said Monday. “We are using […] More

Jim Halsell, Dynetics technical director for advanced space launch systems, will speak at the University of Florida on Wednesday to discuss various topics related to space exploration and engineering. Halsell, a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Air Force colonel, will also talk about his role at Dynetics, the company said Friday. The event will be […] More

Parsons worked with UXB International and Dynasafe International under a U.S. government program to help secure then destroy chemical weapons in Libya, as a prime contractor in the Cooperative Threat Reduction Integrating Contract II. The Nunn-Lugar CTR Program was funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and tasked Parsons with securing the weapons storage facility and destruction area, […] More

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions has unveiled a command and control system that is intended for use in small satellite operations. The quantumCMD off-the-shelf technology is built to help users develop dashboards and a common operational picture across satellites, Kratos said Tuesday. QuantumCMD is also designed with telemetry, tracking and command tools, as well as HTML5 web server […] More

MITRE Corp. and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore have agreed to form an air traffic management research and development center in the country, Channel News Asia reported Thursday. The MITRE Asia Pacific in Singapore will work to conduct air traffic management analyses worth $100 million in the next decade, according to the report. Lillian […] More

Researchers from NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory have created a geologic map of Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moons that were discovered by Galileo Galilei. The scientific team was led by Wes Patterson of APL and Geoffrey Collins of Wheaton College in Massachusetts and used images sent from NASA’s Galileo and Voyager spacecraft […] More

Exelis has delivered the first of four meteorological payloads for a future U.S. weather satellite of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, moving the program forward toward the planned satellite launch in 2016, Exelis said Tuesday Eric Webster, Exelis Geospatial Systems vice president for weather systems, said, “Delivery . . . is an important milestone because it […] More

Boeing will mentor metallic structure maker AMRO Fabricating Corp. under a three-year agreement as part of a mentor-protege program run by NASA. AMRO produces aluminum alloy panels for Boeing’s Space Launch System and will help with marketing and business development, management development and supply chain management work for the SLS, Boeing said Friday. AMRO is a […] More

Ball Aerospace & Technologies has evaluated how a U.S. weather forecasting satellite platform could integrate with the spacecraft communication network SpaceWire. Joint Polar Satellite System-1 is a collaboration between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is designed to track global climate patterns, Ball Aerospace said Monday. The company built the JPSS-1’s satellite bus […] More