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Terran Orbital CAPSTONE Spacecraft Recognized by Voting Body; Marc Bell Quoted
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Terran Orbital CAPSTONE Spacecraft Recognized by Voting Body; Marc Bell Quoted

Satellite producer Terran Orbital has been distinguished by a voting body for its lunar-orbiting CAPSTONE spacecraft.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Small Spacecraft Technical Committee recognized the CAPSTONE endeavor as Mission of the Year for its achievement in structural design modification, instrument development and communications facilitation, the Boca Raton, Florida-based company said Monday.

Marc Bell, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Terran Orbital, expressed the company’s honor in receiving the award, and thanked NASA, with whom the satellite manufacturers have worked closely on the CAPSTONE project under the auspices of the Artemis initiative.

Bell also credited the engineers who have labored over the spacecraft and who are now directing the ship to the Moon.

The mission of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, is to evaluate and confirm the calculated orbital stability needed for the Lunar Gateway space station. The 55-pound craft is scheduled to arrive in a 1,000 mile vicinity of one lunar pole on its near pass and come within 43,500 miles of the other pole at each one-week peak. Its final lunar arrival date is November 13.

Among CAPSTONE’s achievements is its status as the first spacecraft to chart a near rectilinear halo orbit, which intends to strike an exact balance point in the gravitational zones of Earth and the Moon. By completing this experimental test run, CAPSTONE is poised to ensure that future crafts traveling this orbit will not run into any surprises.

In July, Terran Orbital completed the first statistical maneuvers, in the form of a TCM burn, to enable a stable course for the CAPSTONE’s mission.

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Cherokee Federal Division Secures Spot on $850M DTRA Contract; Karl Gaskins Quoted
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Cherokee Federal Division Secures Spot on $850M DTRA Contract; Karl Gaskins Quoted

A federal contracting company under the Cherokee Federal banner has landed a spot on a potential $850 million contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for security support.

Under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity award, Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs will conduct evaluations, practices and modeling and simulations to help national and international chemical, biological, radiological nuclear and high explosives security, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based organization said Thursday.

“It is an honor to continue supporting the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to protect Americans here at home and our international partners abroad,” commented Karl Gaskins, operations general manager for CNSP.

Gaskins also shared that the specialists on staff at CNSP have been collaborating with the DTRA to perform vulnerability threat assessments for six years. The new contract is a continuation and expansion of this work.

Four other organizations in addition to CNSP earned spots on the DTRA contract. It is aimed to contribute to the efforts of the Department of Defense, the U.S. federal government broadly as well as its international allies, to mitigate and rebuff domestic and international threats.

To complete the assignment, CNSP will leverage its team’s proven track record of partnering with government clients to address challenges in military operational management, overseas diplomatic infrastructure, forensics intelligence analysis, vulnerability/suitability assessments, as well as security force operations and management.

The DTRA contract follows the Defense Health Agency’s multiple award contract to Cherokee Nation Operational Solutions, another Cherokee Federal division, in June. Under this ID/IQ award, CNOS will offer research and development services and translational science and support services.

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CENTCOM Opens Competition to Generate Ideas for Innovation Across US Military
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CENTCOM Opens Competition to Generate Ideas for Innovation Across US Military

U.S. Central Command is requesting active service members and civilian personnel to submit innovation ideas and proposals designed to address military problems as part of a new competition, dubbed Innovation Oasis.

The competition calls for ideas, inventions and processes to be judged by top executives from Google, SpaceX and NASA, as well as senior uniformed U.S. military leaders, CENTCOM said.

Active service members, reservists, National Guard members and service civilian personnel have until Sept. 16 to submit proposals with a visual presentation depicting their ideas in the implementation stage.

The CENTCOM Innovation Oasis team will screen the submissions and select five finalists to present their ideas to the panel of technical and military experts on Oct. 12 at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

The competition winner will receive a service award, a four-day pass and the opportunity to implement their idea across the command.

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GSA Creates Playbook for Implementing Identity Lifecycle Management Process
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GSA Creates Playbook for Implementing Identity Lifecycle Management Process

The General Services Administration’s Office of Government-wide Policy has created a document for identity program managers and enterprise and application architects looking to modernize their identity management process for federal employees.

The Identity Lifecycle Management Playbook serves as a practical guide to help federal agencies understand how to manage the life cycle of identities to achieve an enterprise identity, credential and access management system, GSA said Friday.

ILM refers to the stages of digital identity from creation to deactivation, also known as the joiner-mover-leaver process.

According to OGP, this process can help agencies ensure only active employees can access federal resources, remove access for employees with incomplete security training, enforce least privilege to accounts whose users have changed roles; and implement access control using attributes.

OGP encourages agency leaders to adapt the playbook to their organizational structure, requirements and mission needs. 

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FEMA Allocates $3B in Funding for Two Climate Resilience Programs; Alejandro Mayorkas Quoted
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FEMA Allocates $3B in Funding for Two Climate Resilience Programs; Alejandro Mayorkas Quoted

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is investing more than $3 billion in two resilience grant programs to help communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events.

FEMA announced Friday the funding for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program will more than double to nearly $2.3 billion and the budget for the Flood Mitigation Assistance initiative will increase to $800 million.

About $900 million of the budget will be funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, consisting of $200 million for BRIC and $700 million for FMA.

BRIC and FMA were established to help states, local communities, tribes and territories build hazard mitigation projects designed to reduce their risks to flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, hurricanes, drought and other disasters and hazards.

“With historic levels of funding for the BRIC and FMA programs being announced today, we are investing in our nation’s resilience and building individual and community preparedness across the country,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and a previous Wash100 Award recipient.

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Rear Adm. John Dougherty Assumes Command of Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division
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Rear Adm. John Dougherty Assumes Command of Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division

Rear Adm. John Dougherty, formerly program manager for the U.S. Navy’s Next Generation Air Dominance Program Office (PMA-230), has taken on a new role as commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division.

He took over the position from Rear Adm. John Lemmon, who transitioned to the role of program executive officer for tactical aircraft programs, during a ceremony held Friday at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, the Navy said Friday.

Dougherty will oversee the service branch’s warfare center that has over 17,000 personnel and is responsible for research, development, test, evaluation and sustainment of naval aviation platforms and other warfighting technologies used by the Navy and the Marine Corps.

“We are in a great power competition and the outcome of that fight depends on this team,” said Dougherty, who will also serve as chief engineer of Naval Air Systems Command.

Dougherty previously served as program manager for the Precision Strike Weapons Program Office (PMA-201). He flew with Strike Fighter Squadrons 125 and 147 and completed acquisition tours, including F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program Office deputy director of development and Airborne Rockets and Pyrotechnics Integrated Product Team lead for the Direct and Time Sensitive Strike Weapons Program Office (PMA-242).

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Airmen Demo MQ-9 Reaper’s Capabilities at Maritime Warfare Exercise
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Airmen Demo MQ-9 Reaper’s Capabilities at Maritime Warfare Exercise

The U.S. Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper detachment demonstrated the capabilities of the remotely piloted aircraft during the Rim of the Pacific 2022 exercise that concluded Aug. 4 in Hawaii.

“The MQ-9 Reaper community made its debut at RIMPAC 2022 and led the exercise with 32 sorties in 22 days spanning 316 airborne hours supporting a wide range of mission sets,” Air National Guard Capt. Philip West, RIMPAC MQ-9 Maritime Force integration lead, said in a statement published Saturday.

“We became the most requested asset by partner nations, receiving as many as three times the requests as any other,” added West.

The General Atomics-built Reapers supported 63 missions during the exercise, including 25 maritime missions, six intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions and seven operations to recover personnel. The airmen also used MQ-9s to launch Hellfire missiles.

The maritime warfare exercise also introduced the unmanned aerial vehicle to a sinking exercise, surface and war-at-sea operations, amphibious assault scenario and other maritime events.

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Kamala Harris: Government, Industry Must Deepen Partnership to Seize 21st Century Space Opportunities
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Kamala Harris: Government, Industry Must Deepen Partnership to Seize 21st Century Space Opportunities

Vice President Kamala Harris said the White House will partner with regulatory agencies to engage companies as the U.S. government develops a new rules framework governing activities in space.

“We will do this work to make sure our nation remains a role model for the responsible use of space, because we know we must keep pace with the tremendous rate of innovation,” Harris told an audience during her speech held Friday at the Chabot Space and Science Center in California.

She cited the commercial sector’s work to build and deploy satellites that can support various missions on the ground such as hurricane forecasting and wildfire detection.

Harris pointed to the launch of the first in a series of lunar missions under NASA’s Artemis program later this month as another example of partnership between the government and industry.

The country’s second highest executive officer also noted the economic contributions from the sector.

“Our nation’s space economy employs over 354,000 people and generates $200 billion a year,” Harris added.

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Senators Urge DOJ to Use Suspension, Debarment Authority Against Corporate Criminals
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Senators Urge DOJ to Use Suspension, Debarment Authority Against Corporate Criminals

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., have called on the Department of Justice to exercise its authority to debar or suspend from the federal contracting process corporate entities that engage in criminal activities to protect the government from fraud, waste and abuse.

The lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco on Thursday saying DOJ ordered only eight debarment actions and three suspensions in fiscal year 2020.

“Under current Department practices, even companies that engage in massive, years-long schemes to defraud the public are allowed to continue to do business with the government,” the letter reads.

According to the letter, the Federal Acquisition Regulation allows an agency to debar an organization if it gets a civil judgment or convicted for any offense showing a lack of business honesty or integrity.

Warren and Lujan urged DOJ to broaden its use of debarment through four approaches: exercising debarment authority not only for individuals but also corporate entities; debarring or suspending entities that do business with any federal agency; considering debarment for all corporate misconduct; and using suspension authority.

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Federal Trade Commission Considers Adopting Rules to Address Harmful Commercial Surveillance; Lina Khan Quoted
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Federal Trade Commission Considers Adopting Rules to Address Harmful Commercial Surveillance; Lina Khan Quoted

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comments on a proposed rule to address the negative effects of collecting, analyzing and profiting from people’s information and implementing lax data security practices.

FTC said Thursday it has issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to gather information on the risks posed by commercial surveillance and determine whether it needs to adopt new rules to protect the public’s privacy and information.

The agency raises concerns about the possibility that companies monetize the collection of consumer information, including browsing and purchase histories, online activities and other personal details.

FTC is also concerned that companies analyze the information they collect using algorithms and automated systems that are prone to errors, bias and inaccuracy.

“Our goal today is to begin building a robust public record to inform whether the FTC should issue rules to address commercial surveillance and data security practices and what those rules should potentially look like,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said.

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