Standard&Poor's assigned its double B minus ratings to Alliant Techsystems Inc.'s new bank facilities. The facilities will help the company finance its $685 million acquisition of the Thiokol Propulsion business of Alcoa Inc., which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2001.
INTERNATIONAL LAUNCH SERVICES will launch an ICO satellite, built by Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., in June on an Atlas IIAS vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The satellite is one of 14 being built by Boeing Satellite Systems for New ICO, and the first of eight ICO satellites scheduled to launch with ILS on its Lockheed Martin-built Atlas and Russian-built Proton rockets. The ICO satellite is a Boeing 601 model, designed for medium-Earth orbit at an altitude of 10,390 kilometers (6,456 statute miles).
One Mir's loss is another man's gain. The planned re-entry of the 16-year-old Russian space station on Friday has spawned a closet industry of souvenir peddlers, bold tourists and even a fast-food marketing tie-in. Who's cashing in on Mir's demise? Here's a sampling:
The Bush Administration doesn't plan to push right away for supplemental military aid for Israel because it wants to finish work on tax cuts and other domestic priorities, a senior Administration official told reporters late Tuesday.
Aerospace giant Boeing Co., in a bid for further growth, will push for new business by providing aircraft maintenance and other services in addition to making and selling airplanes and spacecraft, chairman and CEO Phil Condit said in announcing several actions yesterday. The company said it will move its corporate headquarters out of Seattle and set up a smaller headquarters in either Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth or Denver by this fall.
The U.S. Army has authorized the Boeing Co. to being procuring long-lead items for 35 Egyptian Army AH-64A Apaches that will be upgraded to the next-generation AH-64D Apache configuration. The foreign military sales contract with Egypt is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks, the company announced yesterday. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2003. The total value of the program, including aircraft, ordnance, spares, training and support, is anticipated to be about $400 million.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Space Systems Co. of Denver has been contracted by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to conduct a study on a low-mass membrane telescope for NASA's New Millennium Program. The telescope concept is called DART, for Dual Anamorphic Reflector Telescope. The study will be conducted at LM's Missiles and Space Operations in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif., and JPL.
Engineers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility are developing a "flight modem" package that could allow suborbital vehicles to transmit information to the ground via satellite systems such as Globalstar. The three-pound package would eliminate the need for much of the expensive ground tracking equipment currently in use, resulting in "a magnitude of difference in costs," according to Dwayne Morgan, project manager at Wallops.
The Bush Administration will have to cut some defense programs because it wants to spend more money on missile defense, research and development and other areas while providing only a modest increase in the defense budget, House Armed Services Committee ranking Democrat Ike Skelton (Mo.) charged yesterday.
Space Shuttle Discovery and seven astronauts returned to Earth in pre-dawn darkness early yesterday, capping an epic 13-day mission that brought home the first crew from the International Space Station Alpha after four months in space. Shuttle commander Jim Wetherbee steered the 100-ton winged spaceship to a gliding landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) at 2:31 a.m. Eastern Standard Time to close out the STS-102 mission, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
NASA is hoping to break its recent string of back-to-back Martian mission failures with the launch of the much-reviewed 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter on April 7. Scott Hubbard, NASA's Mars program director, said only 60% of NASA's Mars missions have been successful, a percentage not helped by the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander in 1999. "Clearly, we want to, we must, do better," Hubbard said at a mission briefing at NASA Headquarters Monday.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. began assembly of the first operational F-22 Raptor at its facilities in Fort Worth, the company announced Monday. Work on the mid-fuselage for Raptor 4018, as this F-22 is designated, will take 11 months. Once done it will be delivered to the company's Marietta, Ga. facility, where its forward fuselage, wings, aft fuselage and vertical and horizontal tails will be attached and its F119 engines installed.
House Armed Services readiness subcommittee Chairman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) has asked the Defense Dept. to consider establishing a U.S. military base in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis to facilitate anti-drug operations in Latin America and replace the Vieques training ground in Puerto Rico.
Orbital Sciences Corp., regrouping from a failed satellite messaging venture, says a new contract establishes the company as a major force in the world market for geosynchronous-orbit communications satellites, Aerospace Daily affiliate AviationNow.com reported.
Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science is planning to launch a Venus surveyor spacecraft in the spring of 2007, according to the institute. The program will cost about $166 million and the institute is expected to request the first part of the budget in its fiscal 2002 budget request. Current plans call for the surveyor to arrive at Venus in 2009 and survey its volcanoes and atmosphere with near infrared and ultraviolet cameras.
The BF Goodrich Co. has been awarded an engineering and development contract for the RAH-66 Comanche Advanced Laser Warning Receiver from ITT Industries, the company announced Monday. These threat-warning sensors help protect the aircraft and crew from laser-aided weapon systems on the battlefield. The Comanche is being developed for the Army by U.S. Army Aviation and a team of aerospace companies headed by the Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. Boeing previously selected ITT to provide the integrated survivability system for the Comanche.
CORRECTION: A story in the March 20 DAILY about Boeing's Joint Direct Attack Munition inadvertently left out some sentences. The paragraph should have read: The kit allows a gravity bomb to use a GPS hand-off from its launching aircraft, giving the bomb a very accurate position at the start of the drop, AF Lt. Col. Richard Walley, AF JDAM deputy program director, told The DAILY via telephone from the Air Armament Center Eglin AFB, Fla. The bomb can then attack its target inertially or receive continual GPS updates, as many as 600 per second.
Raytheon Co.'s best-of-breed transmit/receive radar module has concluded its critical technical review and has begun prototype manufacturing, the company has announced. The best-of-breed T/R module development is a 30-month joint effort between Raytheon's Air/Missile Defense business unit and the U.S. Army and is funded by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Its aim is to increase the capability of the T/R modules while reducing their cost.
Iran intends to buy Russian Tor-M1, Tor-M1T and S-300 air-defense missile systems, according to the ITAR-TASS Russian news agency. The air defense systems are for use against aircraft and missiles. Iran expressed interest in the systems during an Iranian military delegation's recent visit to Moscow, the news agency reported. The agency said Iran is particularly interested in deploying the Russian-made systems to defend the Bushehr nuclear power station and other installations against attack from precision weapons.
House International Relations Committee member Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) is urging committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) to hold hearings on Russia's planned arm sales to Iran. In a letter to Hyde last week, Pitts wrote that the sales could boost Iran's already ambitious efforts to rebuild its military and develop weapons of mass destruction, increasing the threat to security in the Persian Gulf region. He said the U.S. should consider imposing sanctions on Russia.
President Bush intends to nominate Charles S. Abell to be assistant secretary of defense for force management, the White House announced Monday. He is currently a staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and was a member of the office of legislative liaison of the Secretary of the Army from 1989 to 1992. He is a 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army.
The Air Force has presented the decision briefing of the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD) to acting Air Force Acquisition Executive Darleen Druyun and expects the go-ahead for full rate production sometime this week.
Northrop Grumman Corp., Integrated Systems Sector, Airborne Ground Surveillance Battle Management System, of Melbourne, Fla., was awarded $163 million of a $169 contract modification for procurement of long lead items for the Air Force's 15th Air Force Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft.
NASA and some of its international partners remain at loggerheads with the Russian Aerospace Agency over the possible presence of millionaire Dennis Tito on an upcoming Soyuz flight to the International Space Station Alpha. Mike Hawes, deputy associate administrator for space development, said at a NASA press conference yesterday that "we're concerned first and foremost about the safety of the Station and its crew."
The U.S. military services plan to come up with a unified Defense Dept. program to address noise from aircraft and other equipment, service officials told the Senate Armed Services readiness subcommittee yesterday.
