TELSTAR 5 communications satellite, launched May 25 by a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, has been successfully deployed at 97 degrees west longitude and began full commercial service July 1, according to Loral Skynet, which owns and operates Telstar satellites. The subsidiary of Loral Space&Communications Ltd., based in Bedminster, N.J., said Telstar 5 covers the continental U.S., Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and parts of Canada and Latin America.
GE Spacenet, McLean, Va., completed its acquisition of Tridom Corp., Marietta, Ga., from AT&T after securing all necessary regulatory approvals. Terms were not disclosed. GE Spacenet said the acquisition increases its presence in Latin America and Asia. Its Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite data and video communications base now totals more than 70,000 sites worldwide.
BEI Electronics Inc., San Francisco, will form a new company called BEI Technologies Inc. to operate its sensors and systems business. BEI said yesterday that it will also formally terminate its defense systems business segment within the next year. It has already halted production of military rockets. The new company will concentrate on engineered components and subsystems for industrial, automotive, aerospace and automation markets.
Donald R. Beall, chairman and chief executive officer of Rockwell International, will retire as CEO on Sept. 30, the end of the company's fiscal year, and as chairman in February 1998, following the company's annual shareholder meeting, the company said yesterday. He will be replaced by Don Davis Jr., now president and chief operating officer. At the same time, the Rockwell board will establish an Executive Committee with Beall as chairman.
The first image from NASA's Mars Pathfinder, provided it survives its risky entry, descent and landing sequence on Friday, will be a color view of the Sojourner rover mounted atop one of the lander's three solar array "petals," the red surface of Mars in the background.
JAPAN'S DEFENSE AGENCY has decided to postpone introduction of tanker aircraft until after 2000. The program called for introduction of the first four tankers during the Defense Buildup Five Year Program (1996-200), but defense budget cuts of $8 billion forced a slip in the schedule. The tanker has not yet been selected, but cost is estimated to be more than $60 million per unit. Other victims of the budget cut may include Mitsubishi F- 2 close air support fighters and Sikorsky/Mitsubishi SH-60J anti-submarine warfare helicopters.
NASA's Mars Pathfinder was on target yesterday for a bullseye landing in an ancient outflow plain laid down when the Red Planet was wet, but before eager scientists can get their first close look at the surface in almost 21 years their sophisticated instruments must survive a four-and-a-half-minute landing sequence that has engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab here biting their nails.
Two U.S. government agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the Dept. of Defense, yesterday okayed Boeing Co.'s planned acquisition of McDonnell Douglas Corp., leaving approval by shareholders and the European Commission as the only other hurdles in the way of the $14 billion deal. The EC decision could come as early as Friday, and shareholders are scheduled to vote on July 25. FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky and Commissioners Janet Steiger, Roscoe Starek III and Christine Varney supported the deal, while Commissioner Mary Azcuenaga did not.
An unmanned rocket-powered research vehicle for the study of supersonic transport technology will be built and tested by Japan's Science and Technology Agency. The agency's National Aerospace Laboratory, working with an airframe maker that will be selected later, will design the vehicle by November. Two prototypes will be built between 1998-2000 and be tested for two years.
Seven days after a runaway Progress supply capsule knocked out roughly half the power supply on Russia's Mir orbital station, the three-man crew has managed to recover all of the critical systems aboard and is preparing to receive the gear it will take to restore most of the station's lost solar-generating capability.
Technology developed for the burgeoning commercial communications satellite market can improve the capability of many U.S. military and other government satellite systems, reversing the 40-year trend of government laying the groundwork for commercial satellite developments, according to Donald L. Cromer, president of Hughes Space and Communications Co.
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY said Antonio Rodota took over yesterday as head of ESA, a position he will hold for the next four years. Rodota, of Italy, succeeds the French Director General, Jean Marie Luton, who has been in charge since 1990. ESA said Rodota, 61, has served as director of the Space Div. of Italy's Finmeccania, managing director of the Italian-British Quadratics Supercomputer World Ltd., and a member of the boards of several international companies, including Arianespace.
PanAmSat Corp., Greenwich, Conn., signed agreements with Telstra Corp. and AAPT Sat-Tel, both of Australia, to provide satellite capacity for domestic use in Australia. PanAmSat said the two companies will use the PAS-2 Pacific Ocean Region satellite to offer digital voice, video and data communication services. PAS-2 will also allow Telstra and AAPT to transmit to Australia directly from north Asia and the western U.S.
The U.S. Army endorses an effort to reduce the cost of tactical missile programs by using a common arming device. Brig. Gen. Willie B. Nance, the Army's tactical missile program executive officer, says the service will "aggressively support" the Electronic Safe, Arm and Fire (ESAF) program. It is part of the Defense Dept.'s Affordable Multi-Missile Manufacturing (AM3) program, being run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Pentagon faulted methodology used by the General Accounting Office in an assessment of Gulf War airpower that concluded, among other things, that there is no apparent link between the use of more sophisticated weapons and the number of targets destroyed. The report is "the analytical equivalent of a dumb bomb," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "It's off target and loud."
Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, which plans to form the first mobile air brigade with 29 helicopters by 2000, will request funding in the fiscal year 1998 budget for procurement of the first helicopters. The army, by 2000, plans to buy four Kawasaki OH-1 light helicopters, three or four Boeing/Kawasaki CH-47J airlift helicopters and four to six Sikorsky/Mitsubishi UH-60J utility helicopters.
NASA'S SPACE SHUTTLE Columbia lifted off yesterday on a 16-day reflight of an earlier microgravity science mission cut short because of a suspect fuel cell reading. In a launch threatened by gathering rain clouds, the shuttle lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., at 2:02 p.m. EDT. The crew of STS-94 will repeat promising experiments started but not completed on the STS-83 mission aborted after four days earlier this year because of concerns the fuel cell might explode (DAILY, April 8, 9).
JAPAN'S NATIONAL SPACE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY has stopped sending emergency commands to the troubled Advanced Earth Orbiting Satellite (ADEOS). Attempts to contact it have all failed, NASDA said yesterday. It lost contact with the satellite early Monday (DAILY, July 1), and a faulty solar panel is thought to be the problem. NASDA said the panel had been malfunctioning since June 23, and that electrical generation had been decreasing since June 27.
The fiscal year 1998 defense authorization bill, passed last week by the House, contains $3.7 billion in unneeded procurement funds that could be better spent to restore cuts in Dept. of Energy accounts and to support key DOD modernization programs, the White House says in a letter to lawmakers. It says the money could be used for programs like the Arsenal Ship Demonstrator and the next-generation aircraft carrier.
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) has introduced a bill to prohibit the U.S. from selling or transferring advanced weapons to any country in Latin America. He said it would call upon the president to respect the wishes of a number of Latin American leaders, and maintain a moratorium on the sale of such weapons. The bill would ban fighter aircraft and attack helicopters, but doesn't include transport helicopters.
The U.S. Marine Corps is considering an unmanned helicopter to supply troops operating ahead of regular supply lines or in high threat areas. "To try to increase the pace of warfighting is a logistics sustainment problem," Lt. Col. Bron Madrigan, aviation branch chief for the Marine Corps warfighting lab, said in an interview. "One of the concepts [to overcome the problem] is using a low cost, fairly low risk unmanned helicopter," he said.
The U.S. Army has completed its integrated baseline review of the Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program. The largely procedural but mandatory review, which focused on implementation of the $1.7 billion development contract signed earlier this year, went smoothly, and no action items were reported, according to an Army spokesman.
