HOT TOPIC: Space officially a 'competitive domain'
 The Trump administration's first National Security Strategy makes space a "priority domain" and recognizes the private sector as a central player. It directs the National Space Council to develop a new strategy to support innovation and preserving American dominance in space. The strategy promotes space commerce, calls for the simplification of commercial space activity regulations to strengthen competitiveness; promotes commercial space to improve resiliency and considers the extension of national security protections to the private sector. On space exploration, it supports public-private partnerships and ventures beyond low Earth orbit with allies to promote human exploration within our solar system.
Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "I think the strategy is fully consistent with what Gen. John Hyten and others in the national security space community have been saying for years now. Space is becoming more diverse, disruptive, disordered, and dangerous, and the United States needs to change course to maintain its leadership in this vital domain."
The NSS is built around four broad areas: defending the homeland, promoting American prosperity and economic security, preserving peace through strength, and advancing American influence in the world.
This is the earliest rollout of a national security strategy by an administration and the first time it's been delivered by a president.
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| | | Still no budget deal, and ominous signs for DoD contractors  Congress is still deadlocked over 2018 federal spending. For the Pentagon the best-case scenario is a flat budget, continued uncertainty and program delays. That is bad news for the defense industry. During the recent defense drawdown the number of vendors doing business with the Department of Defense declined by 17,000, or almost 20 percent. "Clearly, the decade-long defense drawdown has resulted in lost suppliers, changes in competition and market structure, and further industrial base turmoil," said David Melcher, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association.
According to new data from the Center of Strategic and International Studies, at the start of the defense drawdown in 2011 and 2012, average annual Defense Department contract obligations dropped by 5 percent compared to 2009 and 2010. When the Budget Control Act went into effect in fiscal year 2013, Pentagon contract obligation plummeted by 15 percent from 2012. And average annual defense contracts fell 23 percent between 2013 and 2015.
MORE DETAILS HERE | |  | | The winners of the 2017 SpaceNews Awards for Excellence & Innovation. From left, Planet's Richard Leshner; H.E. Sylvie Lucas, ambassador of Luxembourg; SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell; ILS President Kirk Pysher; Col. Steven Lang, 45th Space Wing; Lt. Col. Jack Lovin, USSTRATCOM; Marcy Steinke, Maxar Technologies; Jason Crusan, NASA. Credit: SpaceNews | | | Lockheed will use artificial intelligence to analyze space data  Intelligent machines are taking the technology world by storm, and have started to move to outer space. One of the most advantageous uses of smart software is to analyze data, and increasingly governments and industries see AI as the answer to the big-data deluge, much of it coming from space.
"Artificial intelligence can revolutionize how we use information from space, both in orbit and on deep space missions, including crewed missions to Mars and beyond," said Carl Marchetto, vice president of new ventures at Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado. The company announced last week it will start using artificial intelligence software from NEC to analyze data collected by sensors in space.
MORE DETAILS HERE | | | GPS 3: Some good news this year, but trouble lies ahead  As 2017 winds down, the GPS 3 constellation finally has a string of victories for the Air Force to celebrate. The first satellite is on track for a 2018 launch. The digital navigation payload has been fixed after earlier setbacks, and units are in production. And the ground-control software is starting to recover from years of schedule delays.
But there's also bad news. Government auditors have warned that the GPS 3 program increasingly is becoming harder to manage because of the complexity and scope of the upgrades required to military weapon systems to receive the encrypted signals. The satellites might be up and running by 2021 but it could take many more years to get the ground infrastructure and equipment terminals in synch with the new satellites. Things began to get more complicated due to a five-year delay in the operational control system software, known as OCX.
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