NASA spent yesterday preparing the Space Shuttle Atlantis for launch to Russia's Mir space station today, but Florida's stormy weather continued to hamper the 100th U.S. human spaceflight. Forecasters gave only a 30% chance yesterday that the weather will meet minimum launch standards when the 10-minute window for the Mir rendezvous opens at 3:32 p.m. EDT today, and the same odds for a launch tomorrow about 24 minutes earlier in the day.
The Defense Dept. yesterday said the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle will be sent to Albania late this week or early next week to support operations in Bosnia-Herzegovnia. One ground station, three UAVs and around 100 U.S. military and contractor employees are being deployed. About 38 of those personnel are directly involved with Predator support. The others are needed because Gjader Airfield, the Predator's base, lacks full facilities, a source said.
June 21, 1995 Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Stratford, Connecticut, is being awarded a $42,214,000 modification to previously awarded contract N00019-93-C-0053 for the procurement of two CH-53E helicopters, including associated integrated logistics support, logistics support analysis, and related engineering services. Work will be performed in Stratford, Connecticut, and is expected to be completed by July 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.
Lockheed Martin's move to shutter its two Astro Space satellite plants is the biggest single part of the consolidation plan it announced yesterday. It also marks the final chapter for two facilities that have their origins in the dawn of the space age. The plan calls for phasing out operations of the plants in East Windsor, N.J., and Valley Forge, Pa.-acquired just two years ago in the former Martin Marietta's purchase of General Electric Astro Space.
The Swedish armed forces are experimenting with some advanced technologies for a "virtual staff room" from which battlefield operations could be remotely monitored. "When you're in your virtual staff room...you can see whatever you want," S. Anders Christensson, technical representative for Sweden's Defense Material Administration (DMA) said Wednesday in Washington. Users would be able to view an overall situation or specific tactical battlefield areas "to show where the troops are in the terrain."
HUGHES TRAINING INC.'S Link Div., Binghampton, N.Y., will modify 10 AH-64 Apache Combat Mission Simulators (CMS) under a $1.3 million contract from the U.S. Army. The company said the modification involves the development of Gunnery-Conduct of Fire Training (G-COFT) enhancement for all 10 simulators. It said the simulators were built by Link. Hughes Training will install and support each sites' modifications. The simulators will be ready for training by March 1996.
Boeing Co., which halted flight testing of the 777 airliner earlier this month after an "imbalance" was discovered in the GE90 engine, said yesterday that it has "set no date yet for resuming flight testing." It still expects to deliver the first GE90-powered 777 to British Airways as scheduled in late September.
GE American Communications Inc. (GE Americom) will enter the European satellite market in a team arrangement with NSAB, a joint venture of Sweden's Teracom Svensk Rundradio AB and Swedish Space Corp., to provide television and data services in Europe via a common satellite. NSAB and GE Capital Satellites International, a GE Americom subsidiary, will "cooperate to develop the 32-transponder Sirius 2 satellite at the 5-degree E.L. orbital slot currently occupied by NSAB's Sirius 1 and Tele-X," GE said.
U.S. ARMY'S Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM) awarded three contracts for design of a new battlefield training system. The contracts, to Hughes Training, Loral Federal and TRW, are for work on a system to replace the current Corps Battle Simulation, used to train battlefield commanders and their staffs. Loral said its teammates are Dynamics Research Corp., Lockheed Martin, Logicon RDA, Mystech Associates, Inc., and Science Applications International Corp.
Lockheed Martin has promised to announce the results of its merger consolidation plans by Friday, and rumors are flying about what will happen to its satellite manufacturing operations in East Windsor, N.J., Valley Forge, Pa., Sunnyvale, Calif. and Denver. The Trenton Times has reported that the company will close both the East Windsor and Valley Forge plants, while the San Francisco Examiner reports that the Sunnyvale plant may be completely shuttered.
The problem is similar to a disagreement after the 1992 explosion of a Long March and Optus B2, another Hughes-built HS-601 model satellite. That was settled when China and Hughes agreed not to blame each other and sealed the results of their investigations. But this time around Hughes has promised to publicly release its investigation results-and satellite insurers say the company can't afford a repeat of the no-blame Optus settlement.
Parts of the U.S. Army are ready to embrace the CEC concept for THAAD but would like to see a voice capability, one industry source says. CEC's high data transmission capability could easily incorporate voice transmissions, he says, and would provide even greater reliability against enemy electronic warfare. Jamming CEC transmissions is difficult as it is, the source says, but it is even more unlikely enemy EW efforts could disrupt both the voice targeting information and data targeting data at the same time.
The full House Science Committee expects to mark up its multi-year Space Station authorization bill late on Wednesday or on Thursday, with passage likely given the 18-3 vote in the space subcommittee. But the subcommittee hasn't even scheduled a fiscal 1996 markup on the rest of NASA's programs, while the House Appropriations VA, HUD and independent agencies subcommittee will mark up its NASA bill July 10.
Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) yesterday urged a go-slow approach to enlarging NATO, a step which he warned could lead to a higher alert status for Russian strategic weapons. Nunn, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee with a strong involvement in NATO issues, issued the warning in Norfolk, Va., in a speech to a seminar.
The Chinese stand to lose more than Hughes because the Long March has a spotty record while the HS-601 has proven reliability. Richards says insurers won't touch the rocket as long as questions remain about the January accident. "You could probably find some insurers that are willing to insure it, but the terms that they would offer and the rates they would quote are essentially the same thing as saying it would be uninsurable," he says.
Lockheed Corp. topped the Defense Dept.'s list of the largest research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) contractors in fiscal year 1994. The list, released by the Dept. of Defense last week, said Lockheed received $2.64 billion out of a total of $21.8 billion awarded in FY '94. Martin Marietta, which has since merged with Lockheed, came in second with $1.82 billion.
PROGRAM for further development of technology to control reflectance of aircraft canopies is being contemplated by the U.S. Air Force's Wright Laboratory. The effort "will address technical problems identified in a previous program and will improve the performance of low-reflectance, transparent materials," said the Nonmetallic Materials Div. of the lab's Materials Directorate. "Proof of concept will be demonstrated by fabricating and testing several small samples employing the improved technology," the lab said in a June 20 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Although he is highly regarded by the huge House Republican freshman class, Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) managed to win the votes of just over a third of the group for his floor amendment to knock out the National Security Committee's add-on of $553 million for the B-2 bomber. With the House Republican leadership pressing hard for the B-2, 45 of the 73 freshmen voted in favor of the program and against Kasich. Twenty-seven voted with Kasich; one freshman didn't vote. The amendment lost by a vote of 219 to 203.
Arthur D. Little, Cambridge, Mass., will help the former Soviet republic of Belarus solve environmental problems at its former Strategic Rocket Forces bases. Under a $7.6 million, two-and-a-half year contract from the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency, Arthur D. Little said its consultants will help Belarus personnel to assess the environmental damage and restore sites where ICBMs were based, transported, operated or maintained.
Congressional budget conferees have reached agreement on a package that preserves $6.1 billion of a $9.7 House increase over the Administration's fiscal 1996 defense budget authority request, while providing $39.5 billion more than the Administration projected in budget authority through 2002, according to House and Senate budget figures supplied Friday. The budget conference agreement was reached late Thursday. It retained slightly more than 40% of the House's $92.7 billion boost in '96-02 budget authority (B.A.).
