Industry News

Orbital ATK and NASA have conducted a preliminary design review of a land surface mapping satellite the company is building for the space agency and the U.S. Geological Survey. The review occurred at Orbital ATK’s Gilbert, Arizona, facility in July and showed that the Landsat 9 satellite meets system and schedule requirements, the company said Tuesday. NASA awarded […] More

Harris has shipped the third of 10 navigation payloads designed to help boost the accuracy, signal power and jamming resistance capacity of Global Positioning System III satellites Lockheed Martin is building for the U.S. Air Force. Lockheed is scheduled to integrate the new payload into the GPS III Space Vehicle 3 this summer, Harris said Wednesday. “We are now in […] More

Michael Johnson, chief technologist for the applied engineering and technology directorate of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has said reliability issues associated with Cubesats would hamper NASA from advancing the use of such small satellites in some space missions, Space News reported Tuesday. “Because we cannot quantify the mission confidence of cubesat subsystems, we can’t use […] More

Lockheed Martin has received queries on missile defense systems from customers as North Korea ramps up long-range missile tests, Reuters reported Wednesday. Tim Cahill, vice president of Lockheed’s air and missile defense business, told Reuters that interest in missile defense grew over the past 12 to 18 months and that some countries have placed missile technology on […] More

The Department of Homeland Security has partnered with a team of Battelle researchers in an effort to help explosive and canine experts determine capability gaps in the country’s network of explosives detection canine teams. The Regional Explosives Detection Dog Initiative, led by DHS’ advanced research project agency, aims to provide information on threat materials and tactics that can […] More

Romanian Defense Minister Adrian Tutuianu has signed a letter addressed to the U.S government that expresses the European country’s intent to buy Bell Helicopter-built attack helicopters. Tutuianu, Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and other senior government officials discussed the planned purchase with Bell Helicopter representatives at a meeting held last week, the Romanian government said in […] More

Lockheed Martin will build a space instrument that will work to collect data on the planet’s vegetation health and carbon cycle as part of the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory mission. Lockheed said Tuesday it expects the GeoCARB instrument to launch aboard a commercial geostationary orbit satellite as a payload by 2022 to measure carbon dioxide, methane, […] More

Industry participants in the U.S. Air Force‘s OA-X light attack aircraft demonstration are eyeing a separate opportunity to sell light attack planes to the U.S. Special Operations Command, Defense News reported. The Air Force released a presolicitation notice on FedBizOpps in July to gain industry feedback on “platform-agnostic” light attack aircraft technologies that can address the needs […] More

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions is scheduled to begin production of unmanned aerial vehicles for an unidentified government customer by the end of the third quarter, FlightGlobal reported Tuesday. Kratos President and CEO Eric DeMarco told audience at the Jefferies 2017 Investor Conference that he expects the “confidential” UAV program to help increase Kratos’ drone […] More

A Chemring Countermeasures USA subsidiary has won a potential five-year, 30.8 million contract from the U.S. Navy to manufacture up to 1,260,638 simulator flares designed for use by pilots and ordnance technicians. Chemring’s Kilgore Flares business will produce the SM-875/ALE training flares at a company facility in Toone, Tennessee, and is scheduled to finish work […] More