DREAMTIME, the Silicon Valley startup NASA hired to digitize its archives and put high-definition television (HDTV) equipment on the International Space Station, has begun delivering HDTV equipment to the space agency for testing. The company has delivered a HDTV encoder to Johnson Space Center for testing as a Station prototype, and has shipped HDTV gear to Russia for ground coverage of the upcoming launch of the first full-time Station crew.
BLACK HAWK BLUES: Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) says the Clinton Administration is taking too long to send UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters to Colombia's army for its anti-drug fight. Congress has funded 16 of the Sikorsky aircraft for Colombia's army. "The Black Hawk helicopters that were supposed to be delivered next year, now won't be delivered until late 2002 or even later," Lott says in a statement. Such delays are "unacceptable," he says.
GLOBALSTAR has inaugurated its low-Earth orbit satellite telephone service in Iceland, and has won a National Master Standing Offer to sell its telephones and services to Canadian government agencies. Globalstar Atlantic will kick off with basic telephone, voice mail and messaging service to Iceland and the waters and other landforms of the North Atlantic, using gateways in Aussaguel, France, and Smith Falls, Canada, adding fax and data service later.
Singapore Airlines Friday chose the Airbus A3XX over the Boeing 747X, committing to 10 firm orders and 15 options in a deal that could top $8.6 billion. Airbus said the orders give it firm commitments for 32 A3XXs from four customers, the other three being Emirates Airlines of Dubai, Air France and International Lease Finance Corp. Five other carriers, including two cargo airlines, have expressed serious interest in the 555-seat plane.
TRW Inc., as part a drive to pay off debt, said it is selling its Man-Machine Interface business, to ITT Industries Inc. for about $60 million. "The Man-Machine Interface business has excellent growth prospects in light of the booming telecommunications industry, but it does not fit with TRW's long-term business plan," said Heinz Pfannschmidt, executive VP and general manager, TRW Automotive Electronics.
DUMMY PAYLOAD: Japan won't entrust a real payload to the first H-IIA rocket next year because of uncertainty over the reliability of the rocket's main engine. Instead, Japan's entry in the commercial space launch market will make its inaugural flight with a two-ton instrumented dummy satellite aboard. Engineers at the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) are worried they don't fully understand the cause of a liquid hydrogen leak during an engine test in July.
TRW has started hot-fire testing its 650,000-lbf Low Cost Pintle Engine at Stennis Space Center, Miss. With an outside chamber diameter of 68 inches, the TRW engine is the largest ever tested in the U.S. except for the Aerojet M-1 tested in 1965. TRW is demonstrating scalability of the low-pressure engine, which is designed to hold down costs by eliminating the multiple injector design of conventional rocket engines.
'2001 MARS ODYSSEY' is the name NASA has selected for the orbiter it will send to the Red Planet next year. Set for launch next April 7, the Lockheed Martin-built probe will measure hydrogen near the planet's surface in a search for water, and will map the minerals on the surface as well. It will also study the radiation environment of Mars, information that will be useful in protecting future human explorers, NASA said. The name derived from the famous Arthur C. Clarke novel "2001: A Space Odyssey."
KELLSTOM INDUSTRIES, Sunrise, Fla., said it has reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin that enables Kellstom Certified Div. to use the name "Kellstom Certified/Lockheed Martin C-130 Short Pod Upgrade Kit" in the marketing of its auxiliary power unit to the C-130 and L-100 marketing.
DEFENSE DRAG-ON: Congress will try this week to wrap up the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill, whose consideration by a House-Senate conference committee has dragged on for weeks due to wrangling over non-aerospace provisions. Lawmakers are scheduled to adjourn for the year Friday, but a bevy of unfinished business, including the fiscal 2001 intelligence authorization legislation, could force Congress to stay in town longer and/or hold a lame-duck session after the November elections. Sen. Lott blasts delay in helicopter shipments to Colombia.
POLITICAL ROLE: NASA has always been a part of the U.S. government, but the European Space Agency is a multi-national organization of member states with sometimes-conflicting agendas. Now the European Commission and ESA have undertaken an effort "to define a role for EU in the field of space and to give a political and Community dimension to space," according to Philippe Busquin, EU research commissioner.
Honeywell established Honeywell Canada Logistics Services, a new enterprise aimed at positioning the company to bid on the Canadian Dept. of National Defense (DND) Supply Chain Project. Honeywell Canada Logistics Services will head an organization to respond to the soon-to-be-released request for proposal for the Supply Chain Project, an outsourcing initiative within DND's Alternative Service Delivery program.
ACCELERATION: The pace of International Space Station assembly picks up again this week with Thursday's planned launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-92, a complicated mission to install the first element of the big U.S.-built truss that will hold the Station solar array and radiators. It isn't all pretty. Crews are scrambling to load last-minute additions to the manifest, including two charge-discharge units and a current converter that will serve as on-orbit spares for the Station's balky Russian battery systems.
LIGHT SHADOW: The U.S. Army's Shadow 200 tactical unmanned aerial vehicles won't have all-weather capability, other than sensors that will detect icing so operators can fly them out of icing environments, the General Accounting Office says in a new report (DAILY, Sept. 29). Adding deicing equipment would weigh down the Shadow 200 and limit its range and payload capacity, the GAO says. The Army's belief that TUAVs "must be inexpensive enough to lose and the Shadow 200's small size make it impractical to give the Shadow 200 aircraft all-weather capability," the report says.
Among the many roles played by the 547th Intelligence Squadron here, the most novel may be operating the Threat Training Facility (TTF), the home of a variety of foreign weapons that is also known as "the petting zoo." The 547th conducts mission planning for the Red Flag exercises at Nellis and puts together the Dept. of Defense "3-1" or "Threat Reference Bible," which details worldwide threats for such agencies as the CIA, DIA and NSA.
Lockheed Martin sees "great interest" in international markets for its TPS-117 tactical transportable radar, according to Richard Schubert, vice president for radar/sensor systems. Ten of the 3D, long-range air surveillance radars are in production now for Australia's AIR 5375 requirement and Brazil's SIVAM program, Schubert said in a telephone interview from Syracuse, N.Y., headquarters of Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems (NE&SS) unit.
Northrop Grumman, working on a U.S. Air Force program to re-engine the Joint STARS fleet, will issue a revised request for quotations on the effort at an Industry Day briefing to be held at its Melbourne, Fla., facility on Oct. 25. Also at the session, Northrop Grumman said in a Commerce Business Daily notice, changes that have occurred since a March 9 pre-bidders' conference will be reviewed. The Oct. 25 briefing "will represent the first forum in which Northrop Grumman will apprise Industry of the current approach to the re-engining effort," the CBD notice said.
A recent test at the U.S. Navy's China Lake, Calif., range showed that a new full-rate production variant of the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) performs as well as the older variant, and at lower cost, the Navy said. The test involved launch of the two types from an F/A-18C under identical conditions.
Israel wants to buy 35 Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters and related systems and equipment for $525 million, the Pentagon said. The country already operates Black Hawks. The request, announced Wednesday, includes 70 General Electric T700-GE-701C engines, 29 spare T700s and external rescue hoist provisions.
NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE wants R&D proposals for the Director's Innovative Initiative (DII) program focusing on the areas of new processing methods, new business practices and new sources and sensors, the agency said in a "broad agency announcement" published in Commerce Business Daily.
The House International Relations Committee failed to resolve a debate yesterday over an "Armenian genocide" resolution that members of the Texas congressional delegation have warned would offend Turkey and cause it to cancel a $4 billion helicopter purchase from Fort Worth-based Bell Helicopter Textron.
MechTronics Arizona Corp., a subsidiary of Ducommun Inc., won the first production lot contract, worth about $3.1 million, to produce electromechanical avionics aenclosures on the 63V1 radar for F-15 upgrades, from Raytheon. "We are very pleased with the signing of the first production lot contract," said Joseph C. Berenato, chairman, president and CEO of Ducommun.
A Pentagon senior review board cleared the U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin Theater Battle Management Core System for "training and implementation," with full certification expected by mid-October. It is already being deployed to some USAF units. The automated command, control and intelligence tool, under development for several years, features an integrated architecture designed to facilitate joint air campaign planning.
The General Accounting Office issued a report yesterday opposing the U.S. Army's plans to double the number of Shadow 200 tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV) systems it buys before finishing operational testing.
