May 18 News Items

Alliance To Help Small Business Work with NASA (Source: Huntsville Times)
How does a small business pursue contract work with NASA? A new alliance plans to answer that question, among others. More than 100 small businesses from across the country were represented Thursday at the inaugural meeting of the Marshall Small Business Alliance. The alliance to help small businesses pursue NASA procurement and subcontracting opportunities is sponsored by Marshall Space Flight Center's Procurement and Small Business Office. Almost 300 people signed up for the event.

Galileo is Military, European Commission Admits (Source: The Register)
Galileo, the planned European sat-nav system, has been acknowledged as having a military role by the European Commission. EC Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot saidGalileo will be "civilian controlled...but there will be military users". The US defense department's Global Positioning System (GPS) offers a good service for free, and Galileo' previous private sector bosses doubted that users would pay for Galileo services even if they were somewhat enhanced. As a result, the EC has been pushing for an extra €2bn of taxpayers' money in order to build the system. Many observers have suggested that government funding for Galileo only makes sense in the context of European military action and infrastructure security, independent of the US.

An EC prediction that Galileo would gain significant revenues from military users appears questionable, as the US offers its NATO allies military access to the higher-precision encrypted "p-code" GPS signal. Just as with civilian GPS users, it doesn't seem especially plausible that European armed forces will want to pay for what they can get free.

Brazil, India Set Up Work Team for Space Program (Source: China View)
Representatives of Brazil's Space Agency (AEB) and India's Space Department (ISRO) have set up a team to study cooperation in the space sectors of both countries, the AEB announced on Thursday. Satellite projects, such as satellite tracking, satellite launching and development projects, are the main areas the two countries will focus on. Brazil has shown an interest in tele-medicine and tele-education programs, and interchange of scientists. India's space activities are mainly focused on satellite programs linked to food safety, management of natural resources and disaster monitoring.

NASA's Talent Pool Shallow, Studies Say (Source: Florida Today)
When NASA was in its moon-landing heyday, the space agency had 36,000 employees and many of the best young scientific minds in the country. Now, when the agency is being asked to return man to the moon and head on to Mars, it has fewer than half that number of employees and is not attracting enough of the best and brightest college graduates, according to two recent reports that examined NASA's workforce needs.