The U.S. State Dept. has temporarily withdrawn permission for the son of a Chinese general to work on a communications satellite Hughes is building for Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications, which is largely owned by the Chinese state. Under the order announced last Thursday, Shen Jun, the son of Lt. Gen. Shen Rongjun, cannot work on the $650 million deal while State checks out whether Shen had access to sensitive technology that exceeded the limits set by the license that allowed him to work on the program.
Russia's Security Council has approved a development plan for strategic nuclear forces until the year 2010 which contemplates cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenal to a level half that of ceilings specified by the yet-to-be-ratified START-2 Treaty. The plan, submitted July 3 by Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, Russia's minister of defense, admits that by 2010 Russia will not be able to maintain more than 1,500 strategic warheads. Most of currently operational ground- and sea-based missiles will have exceeded their operational lifetimes by then, he said.
TRW INC. has opened a new electric propulsion test facility at its Redondo Beach, Calif., site to optimize electric thruster designs and perform tests for TRW engineers and paying customers. The "Cryogenic Electric Propulsion Test Stand" provides a 7-by-17-foot test cell and three 48-inch cryogenic vacuum pumps to maintain high vacuum levels during tests. Because system life testing can take as long as 5,000 hours, the facility is highly automated for unstaffed test control and data acquisition.
U.K. Defense Secretary George Robertson appears to have been successful in resisting Treasury demands for annual military budget cuts of up to 2.1 billion pounds ($3.5 billion) in the Strategic Defense Review (SDR), due for publication on Wednesday. Economies are forecasted to be limited to about 500 million pounds ($830 million) in Britain's 22 billion pound ($36.5 billion) yearly defense budget, allowing most major procurement programs to continue with relatively few changes.
ORBITAL SCIENCES CORP. has finalized a deal worth more than $500 million to deliver as many as 12 satellites, with launch services and insurance, to Constellation Communications Inc. for the first phase of its low Earth orbit communications network. Under the deal Orbital will provide as much as $150 million in equity investment and vendor financing for the project, which will put an initial ring of satellites around the equator at about 1,240 miles altitude, followed by another 42 satellites at higher inclinations to provide global coverage by 2003.
The U.S. Air Force is likely to focus future modernization programs on the increasing use of space, unmanned combat air vehicles, and small weapons, according to Lt. Gen. George Muellner, the AF's top acquisition officer. Muellner said in an interview that he sees more and more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activity moving from airborne platforms to space. He noted that the Starlite, or Discoverer II, program is a good example of that. It will demonstrate the utility of a space-based ground moving target indicator radar system.
Lockheed Martin plans to test a Russian-built RD-180 rocket engine with the U.S.-built components for its planned Atlas IIIA launch vehicle next Wednesday, barring further difficulties. Originally scheduled for late December 1997, the planned test at the old Saturn V/Space Shuttle Main Engine static stand at Marshall Space Flight Center has been delayed by mishaps and design changes.
SPACEHAB AND DASA have joined forces to market sounding rocket flights for U.S. and Asian researchers, the U.S. company announced. Spacehab will handle marketing, while DASA's Space Infrastructure Unit will build "microgravity research modules" to be launched on commercially produced sounding rockets. Researchers will get as much as 18 minutes of microgravity from a flight. Spacehab President and Chief Executive David A. Rossi said the move continues Spacehab's efforts to establish a "full range of microgravity services for commercial and civil customers."
AIR FORCE Dyncorp, Aerospace Technology, Fort Worth, Texas, was awarded on July 1, 1998, a $23,180,981 face value increase to a fixed-price-incentive contract to provide for FY 1999 aircraft maintenance support for the T-37, T-38, AT-
Japan joined the U.S. and Russia Saturday as the third member of the small club of nations that have launched space probes to celestial bodies beyond Earth orbit, using its M-5 solid-fuel rocket to hurl the Planet-B spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit that will take it to Mars late next year.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Tactical Aircraft Systems is modifying radiator panels mounted inside the payload bay doors on U.S. Space Shuttles to give delicate freon tubes better protection against dust particles at the International Space Station orbit. The work, done at the unit's composites manufacturing center in Fort Worth, Tex., involves bonding aluminum doublers and silver-Teflon tape over the Freon tubes in large autoclaves, where the space hardware is heated to 250 degrees F. for eight hours.
CANADA'S NSI COMMUNICATIONS has completed its acquisition of the Satellite Global Access (SGA) division from Spar Aerospace subsidiary ComStream Corp. NSI paid U.S. $3.05 million in cash and assumed liabilities of U.S. $6.95 million for the ComStream unit, which specializes in Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) networks. The deal gives NSI a $16 million backlog for satellite communications systems.
CANADA SIGNED CONTRACTS with the U.K. government and GEC Marine to lease four Upholder class diesel-electric submarines, the U.K. Ministry of Defense announced. A separate contract was signed between the Canadian government and Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd. (VSEL) for initial equipment spares and training, and a contract for Engineering and Support Management is expected to be signed. The contracts were signed at VSEL, where the submarines are moored.
L-3 Communications said yesterday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SPD Technologies Inc. for $230 million. SPD, based in Philadelphia, Pa., and Anaheim, Calif., provides electronics and electrical power products and subsystems for the U.S. Navy and other customers. It had revenues of $170 million in 1997. L-3 Communications, based in New York City, supplies secure communications systems and products, avionics and ocean systems, microwave components and telemetry, instrumentation, space and wireless products.
Russian officials have decided to deorbit the Mir station next summer instead of at the end of 1999 as a way to conserve scarce resources for the International Space Station. Government officials in Moscow told reporters Thursday the Mir program was promised another $100 million, in rubles, to support flight and ground crews and pay for the robotic Progress capsules that will bring Mir down into the Pacific after a series of controlled deorbit burns.
Engine program managers working on the High Speed Civil Transport are more optimistic about the eventual design being capable of Mach 2.4 than their colleagues in the materials community, declaring that progress so far suggests those speeds - essential to the plane's commercial success - remain practical.
The U.S. Army has awarded contracts to three aerospace companies to design, fabricate and test the Tank Extended Range Munition (TERM), a smart 120mm munition for the Abrams tank. The Army's Tank Automotive Command awarded a total of $1.28 million to Alliant Defense Electronics ($395,742), Boeing North American ($467,424) and Raytheon TI Systems ($414,563). Under the program, Alliant is ultimately slated to get $37 million, Boeing would receive $35.9 million; and Raytheon TI Systems is in line for $49.7 million.
US Airways' order last week for seven firm Airbus Industrie A330 widebody twins kicked off an engine campaign that could wind up being worth more than half a billion dollars. Meeting with Airbus officials in Paris, US Airways Chairman Stephen Wolf on Thursday publicly committed to an expected order of seven firm A330-300s, along with options on seven more and 16 of what Airbus describes as "additional reserved delivery positions."
Lockheed Martin has won two contracts worth a total of $70.7 million for work on two F-22 fighter Production Representative Test Vehicle aircraft. One contract, for $50 million, is for advance procurement to support the effort; the other, for $20.7 million, is to provide sustaining labor in support of the program. Both contracts were announced June 30. They were awarded by The U.S.Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense week is expected to officially grant the Air Force authority to proceed with the Airborne Laser (ABL) program. Acting AF Acquisition Executive Darleen Druyun signed off on Air Force plans for ABL on June 26. The ABL staff within the Pentagon reviewed the program last week. Among issues considered in the review were ability to track a missile in flight and effects of the atmosphere on laser beam propagation.
Air Force Gen. Charles T. Robertson Jr., approved by the Senate as new commander of the U.S. Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing on his nomination that replacing the C-5's aging TF39 engine with a commercial-off-the shelf engine "will substantially increase C-5 reliability." He notes that C-5 reliability, maintainability and availability of the aircraft has continued to decline since fiscal 1991 despite significant management attention and modification initiatives to reverse the trend.
United Space Alliance has taken over three more Space Shuttle operations contracts, as NASA's effort to consolidate all of the day-to-day Shuttle operations under the Boeing/Lockheed Martin joint venture moves into its second phase. Effective today, Lockheed Martin employees in Houston who develop the Primary Avionics Software System that is used to fly the Shuttle and Boeing employees there who process flight equipment for Shuttle astronauts will be rebadged as USA employees, according to a USA spokesman.
