Northrop Grumman launches second classified US government mission in two days with NROL-111
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nasaspaceflight.com ^
| June 14, 2021 | Trevor Sesnic & Mihir Neal
The company used their solid propellant Minotaur I rocket to place the payloads into a low Earth orbit with a liftoff from Pad-0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia occurring on Tuesday, June 15 at 13:35 UTC (09:35 EDT). Due to the classified nature of the launch, nothing is
publicly known about the payloads. However, the mass must be less than 580 kg, which is the max payload capacity of the Minotaur I. In keeping with NRO tradition, the mission patch consists of a whimsical piece of artwork, a mission motto, and some clues as to the...
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Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket launches U.S. Space Force mission
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Space News ^
| une 13, 2021 | by Sandra Erwin — J
A Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket launched the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission June 13 at 1:11 a.m. Pacific from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The payload was successfully deployed its intended orbit, a Space Force spokesman confirmed on Sunday. Pegasus is an air-launched rocket deployed from a Stargazer
L-1011 aircraft. Shortly after its release from Stargazer, at approximately 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, Pegasus ignited its first stage and flew TacRL-2 to a sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit. Launch vehicle assembly, integration and testing were completed within four months of contract award, said Lt. Col. Ryan Rose,...
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How to watch Northrop Grumman launch a space toilet to the ISS on Thursday
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Digital Trends ^
| September 29, 2020 7:16AM PST | Georgina Torbet
This Thursday, Northrop Grumman will launch a Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) carrying not only supplies for the crew, but also new science experiments to be tested out in the microgravity environment. With
a total of 8,000 pounds of cargo, the Cygnus will be launched on an Antares rocket from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. This will be Northrop Grumman’s 14th resupply mission to the ISS, and you can watch the launch and the arrival of the Cygnus at the ISS live. The launch and the spacecraft’s arrival at the ISS will both be shown on...
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Northrop Grumman Gets $13.3 Billion Air Force Contract to Engineer New ICBMs
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MIlitary.com ^
| 09/09/2020 | By Oriana Pawlyk
An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at 1:13 a.m. Pacific Time Oct. 2, 2019, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract to engineer and manufacture its next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile. (Air
Force Photo by Staff Sgt. J.T. Armstrong) The U.S. Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the service's next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles to replace the aging Minuteman III ICBMs. The service on Tuesday said the contract for the Ground Based...
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Northrop Grumman outlines HALO plans for Gateway’s central module
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nasaspacefilght.com ^
| 08/07/2020 | Chris Gebhardt
With the first two major elements of NASA’s Lunar Gateway under contract and development, Northrop Grumman has outlined their plans for the overall Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, which will serve as the primary habitation and nexus for the lunar station. HALO
will now launch in a fully integrated configuration with Maxar’s Power and Propulsion Element — a change that has brought about alterations to HALO. The duo will launch aboard a yet-to-be-officially confirmed rocket from the Florida spaceport in 2023. The cargo items now excluded from launching on HALO will have to be delivered separately on a future...
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NASA Awards Northrop Grumman Artemis Contract for Gateway Crew Cabin
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nasa ^
NASA has finalized the contract for the initial crew module of the agency’s Gateway lunar orbiting outpost. Orbital
Science Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Space, has been awarded $187 million to design the habitation and logistics outpost (HALO) for the Gateway, which is part of NASA’s Artemis program and will help the agency build a sustainable presence at the Moon. This award funds HALO’s design through its preliminary design review, expected by the end of 2020. “This contract award is another significant milestone in our plan to build robust and sustainable lunar operations,” said...
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Northrop Grumman Shipping Secret Cargo Through Redondo Beach Marina
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ktla ^
| October 18, 2019 | Mary Beth McDade,
Defense contractor Northrop Grumman has begun moving secret cargo through a Southern California marina this weekend. The
large object will be taken from a Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach to a barge for shipment to San Diego. Northrop Grumman officials cited national security concerns in declining to provide information about the object. The company agreed on Oct. 15 to pay the city $25,000 for a licensing agreement to use the marina and for any costs the city incurs.
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Northrop's satellite refueling spacecraft launches on October 9th
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Engadget ^
| 10/06/2019 | Jon Fingas
Northrop Grumman and NASA are launching a "first-of-its-kind" refueling vessel, the Mission Extension Vehicle, aboard a Russian rocket on October 9th. The
inaugural MEV-1 will dock with an Intelsat satellite in three months' time and provide life-extending services over five years. After that, it should be free to help other satellites -- it'll still have 10 years' worth of fuel. A second spacecraft, MEV-2, will help another Intelsat satellite in 2020 and should have the same amount of leftover fuel. Both MEVs are flexible, too. They can dock with 80 percent of current geostationary satellites, even if they weren't designed...
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Northrop And Raytheon Have Been Secretly Working On Scramjet Powered Hypersonic Missile
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thedrive.com/the-war-zone ^
| June 18, 2019 | Joseph Trevithick
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have revealed that they have been working together on a scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile, which uses an engine that is entirely 3D-printed. Their design is competing against one from Lockheed Martin under the Defense Advanced Research Project's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC. The two companies publicly
announced their partnership at the 2019 Paris Air Show on June 18, 2019, but they have been working together secretly for years on HAWC, according to Aviation Week. DARPA began the HAWC program in 2014, in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). "We have a...
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Northrop Grumman’s new rocket suffers small explosion during first big ignition test
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The Verge ^
| May 30, 2019, | Loren Grush@lorengrush
Northrop Grumman’s first big test of its future OmegA rocket seems to have ended in a small explosion. Today,
the company fired up the main engine on the rocket during a ground test in Utah. Toward the end of the test, part of the vehicle’s engine burst apart, sending pieces of hardware flying. Today’s test is what is known as a static fire, when the engine of a rocket is ignited while the vehicle is held firmly to the ground. Northrop Grumman was conducting the very first static fire test of the OmegA’s first stage — the main body of...
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How Sierra Nevada's "Dream Chaser" Could Become a Nightmare for Northrop Grumman
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The Motley Fool ^
| 01/06/2019 | Rich Smith
Acquiring space launch company Orbital ATK in an all-cash $7.8 billion merger, Northrop took possession of Orbital's Minotaur and Antares medium-lift rocket families. It
acquired Orbital's ongoing project to build a new "OmegA" class heavy lift rocket as well, with which to compete against the likes of United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for large commercial and military satellite launches. Northrop Grumman also inherited Orbital's ongoing NASA contract to resupply crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with needed consumables under the agency's CRS-1 and CRS-2 "Commercial Resupply Services" contracts -- missions valued at as much as $14 billion across the...
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NASA, Northrop Grumman Postpone Space Station Cargo Ship Launch to Saturday
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Space.com ^
| November 15, 2018 02:52pm ET | Tariq Malik,
NASA and Northrop Grumman have postponed the launch of an Antares rocket carrying fresh supplies for the International Space Station for 24 hours due to bad weather. The
launch will now lift off early Saturday, Nov. 17, NASA officials said. The Antares rocket and its payload, an uncrewed Cygnus cargo ship also built by Northrop Grumman, were originally scheduled to launch to the station today (Nov. 14) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, but severe weather from storms along the U.S. East Coast prompted a delay to Friday. That same dismal weather forecast led mission managers to...
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Why 100 Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider Stealth Bombers Might Not Be Enough
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The National Interest ^
| July 4th, 2018 | Dave Majumdar
“Taken together – 120 combat-coded bombers, 20 trainers, and 24 planes for backup and attrition planning purposes – the minimum buy would be 164 aircraft." Why
100 Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider Stealth Bombers Might Not Be Enough Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber is rapidly approaching its critical design review (CDR), when a Pentagon review team will determine if the new aircraft is meeting the technical requirements set forth in its requirements documents. If the design passes its CDR, the B-21 team will be cleared to build, integrate and test the aircraft before its next hurdle: the production readiness review....
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Acquisition of Orbital ATK Approved, Company Renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems
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Space.com ^
| June 10, 2018 09:00am ET | By Sandra Erwin
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced it has cleared Northrop Grumman's $7.8 billion purchase of defense and space contractor Orbital ATK. Orbital ATK will become Northrop Grumman's fourth business sector, named Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. The other three are Aerospace Systems, Mission Systems and Technology Services. With the addition, Northrop
Grumman's sales for 2018 should reach $30 billion. Blake Larson will serve as corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. As a condition for the approval of the merger, the company will have to supply solid rocket motors "on a non-discriminatory basis under specified circumstances,"...
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China Teases Its H-20 Stealth Bomber and Trolls Northrop Grumman At The Same Time
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The Drive ^
| MAY 8, 2018 | JOSEPH TREVITHICK
The state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or AVIC, may have given a first look at the long-rumored H-20 stealth bomber in a promotional video that apes Northrop Grumman’s famous Superbowl ad teasing what is now known as the B-21 Raider. The clip, which highlights the consortium’s various civil and military products,
as well as those from its subsidiaries, has a number of other significant nods to the country’s strategic aviation capabilities, past and present. China Defense Online posted a copy of the video, which combines file footage with slick computer-generated graphics, online on May 8, 2018. Though the presentation...
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Northrop Grumman, not SpaceX, reported to be at fault for loss of top-secret Zuma satellite
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CNBC ^
Two independent investigations, made up of federal and industry officials, pointed to Northrop's payload adapter as the cause of the satellite's loss, the report said, citing people familiar with the probes. The
payload adapter is a key part of deploying a satellite in orbit, connecting the satellite to the upper stage of a rocket. Zuma is believed to have cost around $3.5 billion to develop, according to the report. The satellite was funded through a process that received a lesser degree of oversight from Congress compared with similar national security-related satellites, industry officials said. ... The investigations tentatively concluded that...
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Northrop plant in California gears up to build B-21 bombers
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Stars & Stripes ^
| 11/13/17 | RALPH VARTABEDIAN, W.J. HENNIGAN AND SAMANTHA MASUNAGA
A once-empty parking lot at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s top secret aircraft plant in Palmdale, Calif., is now jammed with cars that pour in during the predawn hours. More
than a thousand new employees are working for the time being in rows of temporary trailers, a dozen tan tents and a huge assembly hangar at the desert site near the edge of urban Los Angeles County. It is here that Northrop is building the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber, a stealthy bat-winged jet that is being designed to slip behind any adversary’s air defense system and deliver devastating airstrikes for decades...
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A top secret desert assembly plant starts ramping up to build Northrop's B-21 bomber
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L A Times ^
| 11/10/2017 | Ralph Vartabedian, W.J. Hennigan and Samantha Masunaga
Northrop won the bomber contract in 2015... activity is ramping up sharply under an Air Force budget that has reached $2 billion for this fiscal year. ... The project marks a sharp turnaround in the fortunes of the Southern California aerospace industry, which has been atrophying since the end of the Cold
War. It was widely assumed that the region would never again be home to a large aircraft manufacturing program and now it has one of the largest in modern history. The program is breathing new life into an industry that once defined the Southern California economy. ... A...
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Northrop Grumman to buy aerospace manufacturer Orbital ATK
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Whashinton Post ^
Falls Church-based Northrop said it would pay $7.8 billion in cash, while assuming $1.4 billion in debt. ... Northrop is one of the Pentagon’s leading suppliers, and is developing its B-21 stealth bomber. Orbital
ATK, an aerospace manufacturer based in Dulles, holds a contract with NASA to resupply the International Space Station. It also builds the motors for several missile systems, as well as commercial and national security satellites. The acquisition would mark a bold move for Northrop that would establish the new venture as a fourth business sector. It comes as the company was seeking to bolster its space...
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Today in U.S. military history: Northrop's flying wing, and Paratroopers embark on the Great Crusade
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Unto the Breach ^
| June 5, 2017 | Chris Carter
1794: The first six officers of the new United States Navy receive their commissions: Captain John Barry (the first captain in the Continental Navy and considered the "father of the American Navy), Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Joshua Barney, Richard Dale, and Thomas Truxtun. 1917: The First Naval Aeronautical Detachment lands at Brest,
France, becoming the first American military unit deployed for World War I. The Naval aviators, commanded by Lt. Kenneth Whiting, will conduct anti-submarine patrols throughout the war. The service collier USS Jupiter that carried the detachment across the Atlantic will be converted to the United States' first aircraft...
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