UK Joint Strike Fighter (JSF): Unable to land on new UK Aircraft Carriers

The UK hi-tech jets that will be flown from the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers cannot land on the ships in "hot, humid and low pressure weather conditions", a report warns today.

The version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that has been bought for the £5.5bn carriers is still in development but currently cannot land vertically – as its predecessor the Harrier jump jet could – in warm climates without jettisoning heavy payloads, the UK National Audit Office (NAO) says.

Though the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) insists the problem will be overcome by the time the first carrier is ready for service in 2020, it is one of a number of concerns pointed out by the NAO over a project that has been bedevilled by delays and cost increases.

The spending watchdog says the early warning "Crowsnest" radar needed by the carriers will not be fully operational until 2022, meaning the ships will need protection from other navy vessels for two years while trials are completed.

Despite the difficulties, the NAO says the MoD avoided further financial calamity last year by choosing a different version of the JSF to fly from the carriers, the biggest warships ever built for the navy.



Originally the military decided it wanted the so-called "short take off, vertical landing" (STOVL) version of the JSF, which is being built and tested in the US, but in 2010, the MoD dumped the plan, with the ill-informed and dis-credited PM, Cameron, arguing in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) that another type of the fighter-bomber was much more capable and compatible with the UK's allies.

The chaotic UK coalition government changed position again in May last year, reverting back to the STOVL aircraft because of the cost of refitting the carriers to accommodate the superior planes was said to be too costly.

Today's report castigates the decision, saying it was "based on immature data and a number of flawed assumptions". It is also obvious that the decision-makers were completely out of their depth strategically and focused only on cutting budgets.

Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said the saga was a "terrible waste of public money."

She said: "Decisions were based on the same wildly over-optimistic assumptions and poor understanding of costs and risks that have characterized this programme from the start."

Jim Murphy, the UK shadow defence secretary, said: "Flawed ministerial decisions have wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers' money at a time of mass service sackings and cuts to pensions and allowances."

US National Radio Astronomy undergoes Budget Cuts

The US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday announced layoffs and travel restrictions.

Director Anthony Beasley, who was appointed in February, had to find $3 million in 2013 budget cuts — about 6% of the organization’s budget, excluding its commitments to the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array in Chile.

The cuts include layoffs of 26 staff members.

According to Beasley, it will mean that there will be less support for users of facilities such as the Very Long Baseline Array and Green Bank Telescope (pictured). “Morale is obviously being impacted by this,” he says.

Beasley says the cuts reflect the overall efforts of the National Science Foundation to trim budgets in order to make way for new projects, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

NRAO is not the only astronomy community forced to tighten its belt. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, announced in April that it was laying off 35 scientists and support workers.

NASA Mars Exploration: Seeking Public Opinion!

NASA is giving you a platform in the form of the NASA Mars Forum that is currently calling for participants. Throughout June you can pose questions related to the re-planning of the Mars Exploration Program.

With the reduced 2013 US budget for space exploration, NASA was forced to withdraw from two missions planned together with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Further revision of the Mars Exploration Program (MEP) is also needed to accommodate new developments in science, human space flight, and technology.

Last week, a Mars exploration workshop was held in Houston, Texas with all the outputs now available at the Mars Exploration Concepts and Approaches website.

Various challenges, approaches, and strategies are presented here for the website visitors to get inspired and contribute to the forum with their opinions and ideas.


The activity should result in selecting the highest pay-off mission architecture with the first launch opportunity in 2018. The strategy will take into account the challenge of sending humans to orbit Mars in the 2030s.

The experimental forum will be active until July 1, 2012. NASA hopes the forum will provide them with a better understanding of public interest and specific areas on which to focus attention.

NASA Provides New Funding to Asteroid Search Program

The asteroid 2012 DA14 currently has the greatest chance of impacting Earth, possibly crashing down on Feb. 16, 2020. NASA

The search for potentially dangerous asteroids will continue through 2015 after federal funders agreed to give the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, a $4.1 million funding boost, researchers announced.

The survey uses two telescopes run by the University of Arizona to scan the sky for objects that enter a collision course with Earth.

The new funds will be used to upgrade the program's telescopes, something researchers said is sorely needed.

"When we began observing in 2000, our image sensor was 16 megapixels, which was large by any standard," Steve Larson, a Catalina Sky Survey researcher and senior staff scientist at University of Arizona, said in a statement.

"Today, commonly available consumer digital cameras have surpassed that size, and we were reaching the limit of productivity with our current camera design."

The new telescopes will quadruple the amount of sky the telescopes cover each month.

The asteroid watchers also plan to use the new money to develop more sensitive software and conduct more searches.

The Catalina Sky Survey uses two telescopes to take images of a selected part of the sky roughly 10 minutes apart, according to a press release.

A computer program then scrutinizes the images to identify objects moving in a straight line.

If the object qualifies as a near-Earth object (NEO), an object whose trajectory will bring it close to Earth, the survey reports it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The survey discovered 586 near-Earth asteroids in 2011, 65 percent of all NEOs discovered.

"NASA has recognized that over the last seven years, our program has constantly strived to improve its performance, and has collaborated with others to find new ways to exploit the nearly 1,000 images we take every night with our two telescopes in the mountains north of Tucson," Edward Beshore, principal investigator of the Catalina Sky Survey, said in a statement. "I think NASA recognizes the CSS as a valuable service to, well, humanity."

Congress mandated the Spaceguard Survey, which the Catalina Sky Survey is a part of, in 1998.

The Spaceguard Survey required 90 percent of NEO's over 1 km in diameter to be found by 2008.

As of 2011, researchers found 911 NEO's through the Spaceguard program and expect 70 more objects will be found, according to NASA.

NASA tracks every NEO that has a chance of colliding with Earth in the next 100 years.

EADS' Astrium interested in U.S. digital imagery firms

Europe's leading space company, Astrium, is "generally interested" in acquiring one of two U.S. digital imagery providers, GeoEye Inc or DigitalGlobe Inc , and would look carefully at a deal if the price was affordable, a top Astrium executive reported on Tuesday.

Evert Dudok, chief executive of Astrium Satellites, said the company's parent, Europe's EADS, was actively looking for takeover targets in the United States, and either of the two companies would be a good fit with Astrium, which is ranked No. 3, behind them, in the geospatial information market.

"We are generally interested, but we have to really see whether that makes any sense," Dudok told Reuters after a panel at the Satellite 2012 conference. "Should such an occasion arise at a price that is affordable, one would certainly look at it."

Dudok's comments came after Sean O'Keefe, chief executive of EADS North America, underscored the company's determination to pump up its U.S. revenues through acquisitions, alliances or mergers, especially in the services and satellites sectors.

Dudok noted that Astrium last year acquired Vizada, a Paris-based satellite communications firm, and was building a strong geo-information business that provides earth observation, radar and other data to customers around the world.

He said both GeoEye and DigitalGlobe did a great deal of work for the U.S. government, which could make an acquisition by the European company more difficult, but he said an acquisition in that area would allow Astrium to streamline market approaches and combine databases for expanded commercial sales.

GeoEye and DigitalGlobe shares have come under pressure in recent weeks amid reports that the U.S. government plans to halve or significantly scale back its expected procurement of $7.3 billion in digital imagery over the next decade.

Neil deGrasse Tyson - We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1) - YouTube

NASA This Week @ NASA - YouTube

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson outlined the president's Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal for NASA during a February 13th news conference at NASA Headquarters.

The proposed budget would enable NASA to continue the space exploration program envisioned by President Obama, one that creates jobs and spurs the American economy well into the future while sending us farther into space than ever before.

Also, the year's first test of the J-2X rocket engine, the 30th Russian Spacewalk for The International Space Station, a milestone handshake in space between humanoid and an astronaut, Science Off the Sphere, the 50th Anniversary of John Glenn's historic flight and more.

NASA Budget Minibus: Congress Poised To Approve $178Bn

Returning from recess today, the US Congress and White House is set to consider the $128 billion “minibus” approved by the Senate on November 1, HR 2112.

It covers FDA, NSF, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and sets their respective budgets at levels approved earlier this year by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“Minibus” is a cute take on “omnibus,” the traditional all-agency budget bill that Congress hasn’t seen since FY 2010 when the House, Senate, and White House were in Democratic hands.

NASA Budget
NASA stands to receive $17.8 billion for 2012 under a $1 trillion compromise spending measure House and Senate budget negotiators released Nov. 14.

The NASA funding, which is $684 million below the agency’s 2011 level and $924 million less than the White House requested, is part of a must-pass spending package Congress is poised to adopt by Nov. 18.

The package, a so-called minibus combining three previously separate spending bills into one, was hammered out during a legislative conference committee House and Senate appropriators convened Nov. 3.

Lawmakers included in the minibus a clean four-week extension of the so-called continuing resolution that has kept the federal government operating since the new budget year began Oct. 1. Congress must pass this legislation by Nov. 18 to prevent a government shutdown.

Summary Breakdown
According to a summary of the final conference report posted Nov. 14 on the House Appropriations Committee’s website, the $17.8 billion for NASA would break down as follows:

•  $3.8 billion for Space Exploration, which is $30 million below the 2011 level. This includes funding above NASA’s request to meet congressionally mandated deadlines for the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket (SLS) and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
• $4.2 billion for Space Operations, which is $1.3 billion below the 2011 level.
• $5.1 billion for Science programs, or about $155 million above the 2011 level. This includes additional funding for the overbudget James Webb Space Telescope program that will be offset by “commensurate reductions in other programs.”

The minibus also includes $4.9 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a 7 percent increase over 2011. 

Some $924 million of that amount is set aside for the Joint Polar Satellite System “to ensure the continuity of critical weather forecast data.” Lawmakers, however, denied NOAA’s request for $322 million to establish a new NOAA Climate Service.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope: Funding Restored

U.S. Senate panel has proposed giving NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) about $150 million more for 2012 than the White House requested for the overbudget project, which appropriators in the House of Representatives voted this summer to cancel.

The additional funding for JWST amounts to a 40 percent increase for the project and is part of a 2012 spending bill approved Sept. 14 by the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee.

Overall, the subcommittee's bill would provide NASA with a total of $17.9 billion for 2012. That is about $500 million less than the agency got for 2011 and $800 million less than what U.S. President Barack Obama sought for NASA in the 2012 budget request he sent Congress in February.

The Webb telescope, which was marked for cancelation in the $16.8 billion NASA spending bill the House Appropriations Committee approved in July, would receive $530 million next year under the Senate's bill — about 40 percent more than the $374 million the Obama administration included for the project in its 2012 request.

NASA Spending Bill Boosts Webb Funds

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill Sept. 15 that would cut NASA’s budget by 2.5 percent while boosting spending on the massively overbudget James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and tying the release of hard-fought commercial crew money to the start of work on a congressionally mandated heavy-lift rocket.

Overall NASA’s budget would drop to $17.9 billion — a $510 million reduction — if the Senate version of the 2012 Commerce Justice Science Appropriations bill becomes law.

While that is roughly $1 billion more than NASA would get under the House version adopted in July, it would leave the agency with its smallest budget since 2009 as it embarks on development of the biggest rocket ever built and recommits to a JWST now expected to cost $8 billion by the time it launches in 2018.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations commerce, justice, science committee, said she and her Republican counterpart, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), faced tough choices in drafting the NASA spending bill.

“We’ve gone beyond frugality. We are now into austerity,” Mikulski said in presenting her bill to the full committee. “This means NASA will once again be asked to do more with less.”

NASA’s other science programs were largely spared in the Senate’s hunt for more money for JWST, which stands to get $530 million next year, or about 40 percent more than NASA budgeted. But the agency’s nascent Space Technology program was not so lucky, losing nearly $400 million from its $1 billion request.

NASA’s human space exploration budget would remain essentially flat for 2012, with $1.8 billion carved out for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and $1.2 billion designated for its companion Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. 

The bill would cap total spending on SLS and Orion at $17 billion through 2017, the year NASA plans to conduct the launch system’s first unmanned test flight. 

Read more about the budget changes here

AIA Concerned by NASA, NOAA Cuts

The Aerospace Industries Association is concerned about the substantial cuts being made to the budgets of NASA and NOAA in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science markup of the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bill.

"We recognize that tough economic times call for tough choices," said AIA President and CEO Marion C. Blakey. "However, cutting NASA and NOAA this deeply threatens American leadership in space and impairs our ability to make life-saving weather predictions."

The subcommittee's markup cuts NASA's space programs by 10 percent from the President's request and nearly 13 percent from the NASA authorization passed last October. AIA acknowledges that many NASA mission areas were adequately supported-but some suffered draconian cuts.

Given the current fiscal environment, AIA believes the $18.7 billion in funding proposed by the President provides the minimum required for these important programs.

AIA supports appropriations reflecting the policy priorities of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 as closely as possible and opposes the termination of programs contrary to the priorities of the Authorization Act.

With the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA must be adequately funded to continue our visible national commitment to space exploration, science, aeronautics and technology leadership-something that 58 percent of Americans recently polled by the Pew Research Center supported.

"Each ride to the space station that NASA buys from Russia is the annual equivalent of 1000 American aerospace jobs," Blakey said. "We should be paying Americans instead of Russians."

In addition, NOAA would get $1 billion less than the President's request-an 18 percent cut in a year when storms have already taken hundreds of lives and shown the need for accurate forecasts.

ESA countries and partners commit to support ISS Exploitation programme to 2020

ESA Member States participating in the International Space Station (ISS) exploitation programme have decided to concur with the ISS partners' objective to extend the duration of their involvement in ISS cooperation until the end of 2020.

Participating States have committed €550 million to cover the period until the next Ministerial Council of ESA in 2012, where they will make new financial commitments.

This decision provides the framework for new development activities aimed especially at fulfilling Europe's obligations towards the financing of its part of the exploitation costs of the ISS.Therefore, opening the door to future industrial developments to be undertaken by EADS, DLR and other European industry partners.

The Council also adopted a Resolution on transparency and short-term measures for European launchers exploitation.

ESA Member States reaffirmed the need to maintain an independent, reliable, cost-effective and affordable access to space for Europe. All this is good news for Arianespace.

The adoption of this Resolution was accompanied by relevant financial commitments from ESA Member States participating in the Ariane 5 development programme to ensure that ESA-owned infrastructure, on which the Ariane 5 exploitation relies, is run and maintained operationally until the next Ministerial Council in 2012. Participating States committed €222.5 million for that purpose.

Finally, the Council approved the proposal by ESA's Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain of a new team of Directors who will accompany him in dealing with the new challenges for ESA in the years to come.

NASA and ESA Break-up over Budgets

The honeymoon is over for NASA and the European Space Agency. Tight budgets at NASA have put ambitious joint space missions on the chopping block.

In recent years, NASA and ESA have been planning joint missions to places like Jupiter's moons and Mars. The idea was that by joining forces, they could mount bigger missions than either could afford alone.

But with NASA's budget expected to stay flat in the coming years, it now appears unable to pay its share of the bill for these missions, calling their future into question.

NASA planetary science chief James Green announced in a 17 March meeting with outer planet scientists that the agency is postponing indefinitely (pdf) an orbiter for Jupiter's icy moon Europa, which may harbour an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface.

(Image: ESA/NASA/M Carroll)

The Europa orbiter was to be one-half of a joint mission to Jupiter's neighbourhood to launch around 2020.

The European Space Agency is still pondering whether to go forward with its half, an orbiter for another icy Jupiter moon called Ganymede.

ESA and NASA have also been planning to send a pair of rovers to Mars around 2018. But NASA is no longer sure if it can afford its own rover, which would have collected rock samples to be retrieved and returned to Earth by a later mission in the 2020s.

NASA contributions also look unlikely for other possible joint missions, including the International X-ray Observatory, which would study black holes, and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to detect gravitational waves.

ISRO Human Spaceflight Receives Big Budget Boost

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) project has been allocated Rs 250 crore.

ISRO's warhorse rocket, PSLV had put in orbit the Chandrayaan-I and two launches of the rocket are scheduled for the first quarter of 2010-11.

India's human space flight programme got a major boost as the General Budget on Friday proposed a significant allocation to it and also sought increase in funds for setting up an indigenous global positioning system.

The Budget, presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha, has allocated Rs 150 crore for the human spaceflight programme under which the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to develop a space vehicle to put a two-member crew in space and get them back safely.

The government has already approved pre-project research and development activities in this regard.

The plan allocation for ISRO has been pegged at Rs 5,000 crore as against the revised budgetary estimates of Rs 3,172 crore last year.

The Budget has proposed Rs 100 crore for Chandrayaan-I and II. Space scientists are planning to land two robotic rovers on the moon to carry out tests on the lunar surface.

The allocation for the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS), on the lines of US' Global Positioning System (GPS), was pegged at Rs 262.10 crore against the revised estimates of Rs 220 crore last year.

ISRO plans to have a constellation of seven satellites which are expected to provide position accuracies similar to GPS in a region in and around the country. The first satellite is targeted for launch in 2011.

The Budget allocated Rs 250 crore for developing the semi-cryogenic engine, which is key to development of advanced rockets to launch heavier satellites.

Mukherjee has earmarked Rs 40 crore for Aditya, the space department's ambitious project to launch a satellite to study the sun.

The project would be India's maiden space-based coronagraph to study the Sun's corona. The objective of the project is to have a fundamental understanding of the physical process that heat up the solar corona, accelerate the solar wind and produce coronal mass ejections.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) project has been allocated Rs 250 crore. ISRO's warhorse rocket, PSLV had put in orbit the Chandrayaan-I and two launches of the rocket are scheduled for the first quarter of 2010-11.

Serious Macro-Photography on a Budget

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NASA Revises Budget for Retired Shuttles

NASA has issued a follow-up Request for Information, or RFI, for ideas from education institutions, science museums and other appropriate organisations about the community's ability to acquire and publicly display orbiters after the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program.

The original RFI in December 2008 noted that a potential shuttle recipient would have to pay an estimated $42 million for the cost of "making safe" an orbiter, preparing it for display and ferrying it to a U.S. destination airport. NASA has updated the requirements and tasks needed to make each orbiter safe for disposition.

The agency will not ask recipients to provide the funds for this activity. Except for cost and scheduled delivery changes, the 2008 and 2010 RFIs are virtually the same. In this follow-up RFI, NASA revised the estimated display preparation and ferrying costs to $28.8 million.

The schedule for transferring the orbiters may be six months earlier than originally anticipated. NASA also desires to make selections a year before receipt of the orbiters, so recipient organisations will have sufficient time to conduct any fundraising activities necessary to support preparation and ferry costs.

RFI responses are due to NASA by 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 19, 2010. Organisations that responded to the original RFI do not need to resubmit a full response, but should clarify their positions with respect to these changes.

NASA is planning to transfer space shuttle Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum. Shuttle orbiters Endeavour and Atlantis will be available for placement no earlier than July, 2011.

AIAA Budget cuts will retrict NASA and Human Spaceflight

AIAA President Dave Thompson has testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology on "Decisions on the Future Direction and Funding for NASA: What Will They Mean for the U.S. Aerospace Workforce and Industrial Base?"

Thompson and his fellow panelists were asked to address the effects of NASA's future direction and funding on the country's aerospace industry and the nation as a whole.

Thompson said that the number of retiring professionals exceeds the supply of younger aerospace engineers entering the profession, and warned the committee that over half of all current aerospace engineers will reach retirement age within five years.

"If talented young engineers and scientists are not recruited, retained, and developed to replace the generation that is near retirement, then the U.S. stands to lose the critical economic and national security benefits of the domestic aerospace industry."

He added that finding talented young engineers will become progressively more difficult at a time when fewer Americans are opting to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

He painted a stark picture of the future of the industry, noting that only 15 percent of American students opt to pursue degrees in STEM disciplines at the undergraduate level, compared to nearly 50 percent of students in Asia and Europe.

Thompson noted that the situation at the graduate level is even bleaker, with fewer American students pursuing doctoral degrees in STEM subjects than students in Europe and China.

Stressing the importance of human space flight in inspiring future generation of aerospace workers, Thompson warned that "A major cutback in U.S. human space programs would be substantially detrimental to the future of the aerospace workforce."

Citing MIT's recent "Survey of Aerospace Student Attitudes," he said that 40 percent of students currently enrolled in engineering programs in the United States cited human space flight as their inspiration for pursing their degrees.

Thompson ended his testimony by urging the Administration and Congress to consider the collateral damage if human space programs were curtailed. As human space flight programs represented 20% of aerospace industry revenues during 2008, any major cutbacks could have large and adverse ripple effects on the American economy as well as the future of the aerospace industry."