The U.S. Army issued a solicitation of industry feedback on the service’s plan to apply emerging technologies to modernize military bases, Federal News Network reported Friday. The service held an industry day to discuss the “installations of the future” concept, which aims to improve operations, maintenance and resilience of bases amid the growing threats of natural disasters, cyber attacks and other risks. 

“The National Defense Strategy states very clearly that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary,” said Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategic integration. “We’ve been treating our military installations as if they were sanctuary cities for a very long time, immune from the effects of the adversary.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to bring predictive maintenance to military installations. USACE is exploring the Virtual Testbed Installation for Mission Effectiveness, a new artificial intelligence-based tool that provides predictive maintenance of facilities. Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, assistant chief of staff for installation management, said the Army should also invest in 5G wireless connectivity, biometrics, cloud-based platforms and connected sensors to better connect soldiers, equipment and facilities. 

NASA completed setting up the test vehicle for the demonstration of the abort system of its Orion spacecraft. The space agency will assess the system’s performance on July 2 at Cape Canaveral in Florida, NASASpaceFlight.com, reported Friday. The Ascent Abort-2 test will be the second and last for the Launch Abort System on the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft. NASA delivered the system’s test booster to the launch pad in April, followed by the test article and the Orion Crew Module in May. 

During the demonstration, the test article will transmit data to ground stations in real time, while onboard data recorders will be ejected from the Crew Module before the system falls into the Atlantic Ocean. Mark Kirasich, NASA’s Orion program manager, said the module will carry a tool that senses the acceleration of the abort system along with a separate component connected to an avionics box called the Attitude Control Motor Controller. 

“The computer in the Crew Module tells us which way to steer and then it’s the ACM controller which controls the pintles and the thrust of the pintles and steers it,” he said. 

NASA first conducted tests of Orion’s abort system in 2010. The agency plans to use the production version of LAS in Orion’s first planned crewed mission in 2023. 

A Senate committee is requiring the Department of Defense to maximize commercial spaceports to launch small satellites and expand the involvement of commercial capabilities in the agency’s space operations, SpaceNews reported Monday. The Senate Armed Services Committee issued its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020, which includes amendments to support the growing small launch industry.

The bill would require DoD to create a plan to utilize and modernize infrastructure on underused spaceports that are licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to support U.S. launches. SASC said the FAA-licensed spaceports could serve as an alternative to Vandenberg Air Force Base in launching small and medium payloads while providing DoD with less costly sites and services.

“Significant investments have been made at inland spaceports, which already have the infrastructure in place to accommodate smaller space launches for the department,” the SASC bill states. 

The Senate panel would also require DoD to report plans to take advantage of commercial vehicles and facilities in support of its future operations in space.