Arthur E. “Gene” Goldman, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is retiring from the agency to accept a management position at Aerojet in Huntsville, effective Aug. 3. Robin Henderson, Marshall’s associate director, will serve as acting center director following his departure. His departure ends a 22-year career with NASA that began…

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – Boeing shipped the third of 12 Global Positioning System IIF satellites for the U.S. Air Force from the company’s Satellite Development Center in El Segundo, Calif., to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Boeing-built C-17 Globemaster III airlifter July 9. SVN-65 is scheduled to be launched in the fourth…

NASA is seeking proposals for small satellite payloads to fly on rockets planned to launch between 2013 and 2016. These miniature spacecraft, known as CubeSats, could be auxiliary payloads on previously planned missions. CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. These cube-shaped satellites are approximately four inches long, have a volume of about…

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant destinations to help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta Sept. 5 to start its 2 1/2-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn began…

The Lockheed Martin team developing the U.S. Air Force’s next generation Global Positioning System III satellites has delivered the first spacecraft’s propulsion core module to the company’s Denver-area GPS Processing Facility. The milestone represents the program’s first major hardware delivery for GPS III Space Vehicle 1 and highlights the satellite’s initial Assembly, Integration and Test…

The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin an $82 million contract to begin initial work on the fifth and sixth geosynchronous satellites in the Space Based Infrared System missile warning constellation. Featuring a mix of GEO satellites, hosted payloads in highly elliptical earth orbit, and associated ground hardware and software, the SBIRS program delivers…

Lockheed Martin has been selected to apply its extensive experience with protected satellite communications to support a new generation of agile, commercially based military satellite communications technologies. The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center MILSATCOM Systems Directorate, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to demonstrate concepts that allow…

Science Applications International Corporation has been awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to provide Blue Devil Block 1 (Blue Devil) Outside the Continental United States operations and maintenance support services to the AFRL Sensors Directorate. The single-award cost-plus fixed-fee contract has a one-year period of performance and a total contract…

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed “weather map” yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds. Brown dwarfs form out of condensing gas, as stars do, but lack the mass…