Intelsat has announced the anticipated launch schedule for its nine remaining Intelsat VII and VIII spacecraft, which are scheduled to join six Intelsat VII and VIII satellites already on orbit. Intelsat said the VII and VIII series satellites are designed to accommodate the convergence of computer, communications and broadcast technologies, and will offer telecommunications technologies such as high definition television (HDTV), direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting, and frame relay. Upcoming launches
Keep an eye on the Internet. The Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to get user-friendly enough that eventually it will post its broad agency announcements and other solicitations on its World Wide Web home page-which more contractors probably have access to than subscribe to Commerce Business Daily, sources say.
Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.) wants to add to the Senate Armed Services fiscal 1996 national defense authorization an amendment that would permit Pakistan to regain $370 million in military equipment it sent to the U.S. for repair. Return of the equipment is caught up in the current controversy over the Pressler amendment, which has blocked delivery of the F-16s Pakistan bought and paid for in 1990. The Pressler amendment prohibits the delivery until it can be proven that Pakistan is not developing nuclear weapons.
Hughes plans to announce tomorrow the kickoff of a venture aimed at offering real-time wire service news to the desktop level via satellite. The service will allow subscribers to pay for only the information they use. Hughes Network Systems is teamed in the venture with Wave Systems Corp. and Verity, Inc.
TRW has more in mind than building staff. When it's done hiring, management says it's ready to think about a "major acquisition," but no targets are in sight. Analysts think it would be in the multi-billion dollar range.
Raytheon and Northrop Grumman will offer a low-cost derivative of the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile in the upcoming Joint Air-to- Surface Standoff Missile competition, a Raytheon spokeswoman says. "Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have concluded a cooperative agreement and have entered into negotiations to develop an exclusive business arrangement in order to jointly bid" JASSM, she said. Raytheon will be the prime, with NG serving as principal subcontractor.
The planned September launch of the second Milstar satellite has been pushed back until November because of problems with the Titan IV rocket, a source said. The problem, which involves a second stage nozzle, has also delayed a Titan IV that had been scheduled to launch a classified payload on Aug. 20 from Vandenberg AFB. Calif., putting that launch on hold for several months.
The Air National Guard is considering acquiring Enhanced Positional Location Reporting Systems (EPLRS) for its F-16 and A-10 fleet, a move the U.S. Air Force is also considering. "I would say we would consider an order for our entire F-16C fleet and our A-10 fleet," Lt. Col. Dave Brubaker, power project branch chief for ANG acquisition, said Friday in an interview. "We're testing the system and we're very excited about it," he said, but he added that "I wouldn't say we've made a final decision yet."
Good news for southern California's skilled aerospace workers-TRW has already hired 400 aerospace engineers this year, and needs to hire another 400 before 1995 is up. Defense revenues jumped to a record $3.2 billion last year at TRW, which claims that its financial recovery has come not only from expanding commercial business but from new defense work as well.
Britain's National Audit Office slammed Eurofighter project managers in its latest parliamentary report, blaming "cumbersome and bureaucratic" management for lengthy, continuing delays and costs ballooning by $3.5 billion over seven years-resulting in a fighter with a nearly $100 million price tag.
A Molniya-3 communications satellite was launched by Russian Space Forces from Plesetsk Aug. 9 to replenish the Molniya constellation. The four-stage Molniya-M launcher inserted the payload into a highly elliptical orbit with a perigee of 472 kilometers, an apogee of 40,851 kilometers, an inclination of 62.8 degrees and an initial period of 12 hours and 16.8 minutes. Later the orbit will be adjusted to ensure daily repetition of the satellite's ground track after every two orbits.
During this month's JASSM industry day at Eglin AFB, Fla., industry and government officials agreed that there aren't any technological risks in JASSM development, says acting JASSM product manager Oscar Soler. But several officials suggested that, for the sake of cost reduction, some technologies-especially those relevant to the weapon's all- weather requirement-be phased in by blocks. This way, DOD can take advantage of ongoing development activities that will lead to a "totally" all-weather system, Soler said.
The House Appropriations Committee approved $410.5 million in reprogramming increases that included funding boosts for the C-XX medium range aircraft ($5.5 million), the Javelin anti-tank weapons system ($5.1 million) and aircraft avionics ($5.5 million). A total of $412 million had been requested.
Look for the Earth Observing System (EOS) to be the biggest difference on NASA between House and Senate lawmakers when Congress returns from its August recess. The House has approved a $322 million cut to the agency's Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE), which includes EOS. But Senate authorizers have fully funded MTPE and EOS, and Senate appropriators, led by Maryland's Barbara Mikulski (D), are also expected to balk at the House's cut when they mark up after the recess.
The Senate on Friday completed all work on the fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill and worked out a compromise on the national security authorization that will permit it to be enacted on Sept. 5, but only after Republicans abandoned the mandatory provisions of the Missile Defense Act of 1995.
TRW's Space&Electronics Group has developed a low noise, low distortion power amplifier chip, which is already in use internally and could be made available commercially. The chip combines high mobility electron mobility transistor (HEMT) devices, used in receivers for low noise amplification, and heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) units, used as power amplifiers for transmitters, TRW said late last month in a statement.
The planned Aug. 31 launch of NASA's X-ray Timing Explorer on a Delta rocket is on hold pending an investigation into an Aug. 5 Delta launch when a first stage strap-on booster apparently failed to separate. An investigation team is expected to deliver a final report next month. The X-ray flight date is also in limbo because McDonnell is still waiting for flight certification for an upgraded Delta avionics package it planned to debut on the mission. One scenario that hasn't been ruled out is pushing the X-ray launch behind the planned Sept.
With Allison Gas Turbine now safely acquired, parent Rolls-Royce is creating a new U.S. organization to contain it-Rolls-Royce North America, Inc., with Richard T. Turner as Chairman and John W. Sandford as President. The move "recognizes the importance of North America, particularly the U.S., to Rolls-Royce in terms of market, supplier base, partnerships and workforce," Sandford said in a prepared statement.
The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile program plans to award two pre-engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contracts next July with options for EMD, acting JASSM program director Oscar Soler told The DAILY yesterday.
U.S. Naval Air Systems Command plans to upgrade electronic warfare capabilities for its tactical aircraft over the next decade, and also hopes to preserve the robustness of its rotary-wing force. "The funding that we have now would allow us to get to the 10-year view, assuming we get the follow-on funding in the following two FYDPs [future year defense plans]," Col. Nolan Schmidt, NAVAIR's program manager for tactical EW, told The DAILY this week.
EER SYSTEMS' METEOR commercial experiment carrier has been cleared for launch at 6:20 p.m. tomorrow from Wallops Island, Va., after a problem with one of the spacecraft's inertial measurement units was corrected, a range spokesman said yesterday. The NASA-backed vehicle was originally dubbed the Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET).
Guy Ilyich Severin, the renowned Russian designer who first became famous in his country for fashioning the life support system for canine cosmonaut Laika, came to the U.S. in 1990 looking for work for his suffering Zvezda Design Bureau. He wanted the U.S. Air Force to buy Zvezda's K-36D ejection seat-which dramatically played on the international stage when Mikoyan test pilot Anatoly Kvotchur ejected from his MIG-29 at 400 feet during the 1989 Paris air show and walked away from the wreckage.
The Joint Attack Strike Technology program office wants to develop nose array technology, known as the Multifunction Nose Array (MFA), under a four-year contract that is part of the overall JAST effort to demonstrate new avionics concepts. The JAST office expects to issue two awards worth a total of $100 million for technology demonstration of multifunction integrated radio frequency systems (MIRFS) technology, an Aug. 9 Commerce Business Daily notice said.
The Koreasat-1 communications satellite started the trip to its intended orbit yesterday, but the extra fuel it must consume to get there could cut its 10-year life span in half. The satellite ended up 3,946 statue miles short of its orbit last Saturday when a first stage strap-on booster apparently failed to separate from the Delta II that was launching the spacecraft (DAILY, Aug. 8, page 194). It was the first failure of a McDonnell Douglas Delta rocket in 50 launches.
The civil aircraft recovery which began slowly last year is picking up steam, and Boeing is the biggest beneficiary, data compiled by the Aerospace Industries Association and released yesterday suggest.
