'Signatures in Space' Connects Kids to Space Day Celebrations

NASA and Lockheed Martin's Student Signatures in Space (S3) program will be one of the highlighted projects during this year's Space Day, celebrated annually on the first Friday in May. The mission of Space Day is to use space-related activities to inspire and prepare young people for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Student Signatures in Space began in 1997 as a way to draw kids into space studies by giving them a personal connection to space. Participating schools are sent large posters for students to sign on Space Day. NASA and Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., are currently accepting school names for participation. The program is open to elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as science museums and regional Boy Scout and Girl Scout councils.

After schools return the posters to Lockheed Martin, the signatures are scanned onto a disk and flown aboard a space shuttle mission. Schools also receive lesson plans and information about the mission their signed posters are flying on.

Upon completion of the shuttle flight, the posters are returned to the schools along with a photo of the astronaut crew that took the signatures to space and a NASA flight certification verifying that the signatures flew in space. Schools are allowed to participate in the signatures program once every six years.

The project is free to participants. Program partners cover all program costs, including shipping expenses for return of the signed posters. Schools and other organizations may request a sign-up form by e-mailing S3 Program Manager April Tensen at signatures@mindspring.com.

Student Signatures in Space is limited to 500 schools per year, and schools are registered on a first-come, first-served basis. Schools that sign up after the maximum capacity is reached will be put on a list to participate in the following year's program.

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National Archives Announces Major Milestone of Electronic Records Archives System

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced today the launch of a major initiative
which lays the foundation for preserving electronic and all other records generated by the government and providing public access to them. The Initial Operating Capability of the National Archives Electronic Records Archives (ERA) is the beginning of far-reaching changes in the management of U.S. government records.

In its initial stage, the new system will support the basic process of determining how long federal agencies need to keep records and whether the records should be preserved in the National Archives afterwards. ERA will support this process for all federal records, whether they are paper, film, electronic, or other media. In July, the National Archives will start moving approximately three and a half million computer files into ERA.

These historically valuable electronic records range from databases about World War II soldiers to the State Department's central files on foreign affairs. The records eventually will be accessible online in ERA.

ERA is a multi-year project spearheaded by the National Archives and Lockheed Martin, the development contractor, to create a "permanent" solution for the ever-changing challenge of preserving electronic records.

Because new formats of electronic records are constantly being created and older formats become obsolete quickly, the "permanent' solution" cannot be a one-time fix. It has to be a dynamic system which can grow to accommodate ever-increasing volumes, be extended to deal with new formats, and evolve to enable records on obsolete formats to be accessed on new computers. The goal is to enable researchers 50 or 100 years from now to find and retrieve
electronic records using the best technology available to them, regardless of what hardware or software was used to create them. ERA will also move record keeping out of filing cabinets and into cyberspace. It provides a foundation for the National Archives and all other federal agencies to perform business transactions online to improve the way government records
are organized, stored, and retrieved. Besides the direct benefit to government, these capabilities will make it easier for citizens to discover what records the government has and to access them.

The National Archives has received ongoing counsel from the Advisory Committee on ERA which is chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to advise the Archivist of the United States on technical, mission, and service issues related to ERA. Its members include experts in archives, records management, libraries, computer science, history, and the
law, including representatives of other federal agencies and of state governments.

Chairman of the Advisory Committee on ERA and co-inventor of the Internet Robert Kahn says, "The Internet has made it possible for people using a computer to instantly communicate across continents and around the world. When the full system is deployed, ERA will make it
possible for people to access U.S. government information across generations."

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NASA Awards Contracts for Design Study of Lunar Landing Craft

NASA's Constellation Program has selected five space-related companies to receive contract awards for a 210-day study to independently evaluate NASA's in-house design concept for a lunar lander that will deliver four astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020.

The awards total approximately $1.5 million, with a maximum individual award of $350,000, NASA says. The study recommendations will be used to increase the technical maturity of the existing design in preparation for the development of vehicle requirements.

The Constellation Program is building NASA's next generation fleet of spacecraft -- including the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew capsule and the Altair lunar lander -- to send humans beyond low Earth orbit and back to the moon. NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the
moon through a successive series of lunar missions.

"These studies will provide valuable input for developing a sound set of requirements for the Altair lunar lander," says Jeff Hanley, the Constellation Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Industry collaboration will provide insight for our planning and early
design efforts for the spacecraft."

The selected companies are Andrews Space of Seattle, The Boeing Co. of Houston, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver, Northrop Grumman Corporation of El Segundo, Calif., and Odyssey Space Research of Houston.

The companies will evaluate the current in-house design, propose safety improvements and recommend industry-government partnering arrangements, according to NASA.

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Sandia Software Selected For Navy's DDG 1000 Destroyer

Jess 7.1a3, a popular rule engine created by Sandia National Laboratories, has been licensed by Lockheed Martin Corp. to play a critical role in the Navy’s DDG 1000 destroyer ships.

According to Dr. Greg Harrison, a Lockheed systems engineer, the company chose Jess after extensive and multiple trade studies confirmed the software’s ability to interface with the information in the DDG 1000 knowledgebase. “I feel confident that we made the right choice with Jess,” says Harrison.

Jess was licensed by Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support (STS), a business unit within the company’s Electronics Systems business area. STS is a leader in the development of logistics solutions and military training and simulation, producing air, ground and maritime systems for customers worldwide.

The Navy’s DDG 1000 is a multi-mission, maritime fleet of destroyer ships. It includes a number of advanced technologies and features, including an integrated power system, dual band radar, integrated undersea warfare system, and advanced gun system. Among other intended uses, Jess will help the DDG 1000 ship domain controller with its alarm management function and reasoning about ship system states for safe operation.

Jess enables software developers to embed intelligence in the form of business rules directly into their Java TM applications. Rules-driven programming, says Sandia software licensing manager Craig Smith, allows software to express real-world concepts in a natural, expressive way that helps business and IT professionals collaborate in bringing enterprise applications to life.

Among Jess’s latest features is an integrated development environment (IDE) for rules that increases programmer productivity and enhances collaboration. The IDE is based on the award-winning Eclipse TM platform (www.eclipse.org) and features tools for creating, editing, visualizing, monitoring and debugging rules.

Jess is the only enterprise-capable rule engine to offer both the convenience of an IDE and an unprecedented level of flexibility and openness that makes it easy for developers to add the power of heuristic rules into applications that run on everything from handheld devices to enterprise servers. Jess supports the industry-standard JSR94 Java Rule Engine API as well as its own rich interface. Jess executes rules written both in its own expressive rule language and in XML.

Jess is licensed commercially and is being used in enterprise applications at dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including many in the finance, insurance, security, transportation, and manufacturing sectors. Sandia also offers Jess licenses to academic and government institutions. Jess (along with the textbook Jess in Action) is used as a teaching tool at hundreds of universities around the globe.

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Engineers Rescue Aging Satellites, Saving Millions

Researchers have used a new technique to save $60 million for broadcasters by extending the service life of two communications satellites.

The technique works by applying an advanced simulation and a method that equalizes the amount of propellant in a series of fuel tanks so that the satellite consumes all of the fuel before being retired from service.

The two satellites would have been shut down prematurely and wasted remaining fuel if not for the new technique developed by researchers from Purdue University and Lockheed Martin Corp., says Steven Collicott, a Purdue professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

Communications satellites, which are maintained in proper orbit about 22,500 miles above Earth by firing small rocket thrusters, must be replaced shortly before they run out of fuel. Enough fuel must remain to get the satellites out of orbit to make room for their replacements.
Some aging communications satellites are each equipped with four fuel tanks. If one of the tanks empties before the others, the satellite loses control and should be decommissioned, wasting the remaining fuel in the other tanks, says Boris Yendler, senior thermal system analyst at Lockheed Martin Mission Services in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Purdue and Lockheed Martin engineers not only determined precisely how much fuel remained in each tank, but they also used a technique to "rebalance," or equalize, propellant levels in all of the tanks. The engineers kept the twin satellites operating an additional six months, which translates into about $60 million in revenue for the broadcast companies that owned the satellites, Collicott said.

This work, led by Yendler, represents the first time such a fuel gauging and rebalancing has been carried out in commercial communications satellites," Collicott says.

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Orion Changes Add Years To Design Phase

NASA has modified its contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. of Littleton, Colo., to design, test and build the Orion crew exploration vehicle.

The updated contract contains three significant changes, NASA says. Two years have been added to the design phase. Two test flights of Orion's launch abort system have been added. And production of a pressurized cargo carrier for the International Space Station has been deleted from the initial design phase, the space agency says.

NASA says it continues work to ensure a smooth transition from the space shuttle program to the Constellation program. This is demonstrated in a fourth element of the contract modification that provides for use of surplus raw materials, such as aluminum-lithium ingots now used in the construction of space shuttle fuel tanks, for Orion, the agency says.

"NASA and Lockheed have been working together as a team during the past six months to iron out many critical design and schedule details," says Skip Hatfield, manager the Orion Project at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "This contract update will synchronize our spending plan with the rest of the Constellation Program."

NASA awarded the Orion prime contract to Lockheed Martin on Aug. 31, 2006. At that time, the development portion of the contract was valued at $3.9 billion with a period of performance through December 2011. This contract modification, in the amount of $385 million, brings the totalvalue to approximately $4.3 billion and adjusts the development period of performance through December 2013, the space agency says.

This update is the result of a NASA request for engineering change proposal issued on Dec. 15, 2006. Lockheed Martin's proposal was received on March 7. The contract modification was signed April 20, says NASA.

The modification reflects continuing progress on Orion's development, including program formulation and systems assessments addressing the rocket, ground infrastructure and all other elements necessary for a successful first launch. The period of performance now matches the evolving NASA budget landscape, the agency says.

"The Orion team has made some critical decisions that will maximize theperformance and flexibility of this spacecraft," says Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation program at Johnson. "This spacecraft will be a cornerstone of America's human exploration of the solar system by a new generation of explorers, and these changes and additional tests will ensure that it is robust enough to accomplish its missions."

Meanwhile, work progresses as planned on the contract. NASA and Lockheed Martin have completed Orion's systems requirements review and aremoving toward a systems design review scheduled in August, NASA says.

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Defense Contractor Delivers Remote Minehunting Vehicle to Navy

A ceremony has marked Lockheed Martin Corp's (NYSE: LMT) delivery of the first production Remote Minehunting Vehicle (RMV) to the U.S. Navy. This delivery is a significant milestone in the development of the mine countermeasures capability for both DDG 51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers and the newer Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the contractor says.

The RMV is a semi-submersible, semi-autonomous, unmanned vehicle that tows a variable-depth sensor to detect, localize, classify and identify bottom and moored sea mines at a safe distance from friendly ships. The RMV transmits real-time mine sonar images to its host ship over a data link system. This mine reconnaissance capability will allow a naval Strike Group Commander to quickly and safely assess the threat of mines in prospectiv eareas of operations, Lockheed says.

In 2005, the Naval Sea Systems Command awarded Lockheed Martin a low-rate initial production contract for three RMVs. In 2006, a contract for four more RMVs was awarded. Total contract value is $118 million. The RMV is produced at Lockheed Martin's Riviera Beach, Fla., facility.

The RMV is the integral mobile subsystem of the Navy's AN/WLD-1 Remote Minehunting System (RMS). The RMS includes the RMV, a launch and retrieval system for the RMV, the RMV-towed sonar sensor, advanced communications equipment and software that integrates RMS into the host ship's combat system.

The RMV is one component of the RMS which is currently installed on USS Bainbridge (DDG 96). The RMS completed an operational assessment in the summer of 2006 and a technical evaluation in March 2007. RMS is expected to conduct an operational evaluation in June of this year. The RMS is scheduled for its first operational deployment aboard USS Bainbridge in late 2007.

"The Remote Minehunting System (RMS) introduces a critical minecountermeasure capability to our forward-deployed naval forces," says Captain Joe Spitz, deputy mine earfare program manager, Program Executive Office Littoral and Mine Warfare. "Sailors now have an organic unmanned mine warfare system that will allow them to detect and classify mines froma safe distance. RMS allows the Navy to send a remotely operated vehicle into dangerous waters, keeping sailors out of the minefield."

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