An Atlas IIAS rocket orbited the Hispasat 1C commercial communications satellite Thursday, marking the second flight for the Lockheed Martin launch vehicle so far this year. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., came at 6:20 p.m. EST Thursday, and the three-ton satellite built by France's Alcatel Space separated from the vehicle's Centaur upper stage about 30 minutes later, according to International Launch Services, which markets and conducts Atlas launches.
NASA MANAGERS set a Feb. 11 launch date for the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to map the earth's surface with synthetic aperture radars. Liftoff is scheduled for a two-hour, 10-minute window opening at 12:30 p.m. on Friday. Earlier the launch -- a retry after weather and a computer glitch thwarted the first attempt -- was to have been on Wednesday, but range scheduling conflict forced the change (DAILY, Feb. 1, 2).
The U.S. Air Force is requesting a total of $71.2 billion for its fiscal year 2001 budget, a 1.1% increase over the FY '00 budget. "This 1.1% increase represents a flat or sustained rate," a senior budget official told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday. But this still lacks the dollars to keep the C-17 program on track as planned, requiring a slight slip.
Digital satellite radio is not yet a reality, but XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio, the only two satellite radio companies, have already started lining up some formidable partners. XM Satellite recently entered into a number of agreements with leading advertisement agencies to promote the planned digital radio network. The company announced its first charter advertisers, including Grey Advertising, J. Walter Thompson, Allstate Insurance, AT&T, Discovery Networks, Ogilvy&Mather and Saatchi&Saatchi's Zenith Media.
The fiscal year 2001 budget request for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization includes $1.9 billion to beef up the National Missile Defense (NMD) program with more interceptors, better radars and added tests.
Army aviation came out about even in the service's $70.8 billion budget request for fiscal 2001, but the funds could get a lot tighter if Congress balks at spending $2.7 billion on the service for overseas contingencies. The service seeks $1.323 billion for aircraft programs in FY '01, which is pretty close to the $1.312 billion it said last year it would request this year (DAILY, Feb. 1, 1999). Missiles would draw another $1.296 billion if the FY '01 request is filled, according to Army budget documents.
The fiscal year 2001 budget remains intact for the Discoverer II radar satellite program, according to National Reconnaissance Office Director Keith Hall. Hall, speaking with reporters at the Pentagon last week, said that like many new programs with "not yet proven concepts," the Discoverer II faces challenges in the budget process. "But I'm glad to say that the FY '01 budget remains intact for Discoverer II."
The Pentagon today sends to Capitol Hill its $291.1 billion fiscal year 2001 defense budget request, barely hitting last year's goal of boosting procurement to the $60 billion mark. The full defense budget, including the Department of Energy defense programs, is $305.4 billion in FY '01. Budget Authority for the Dept. of Defense is $291.1 billion. Outlays for DOD amount to $277.5 billion.
The U.S. military must focus on a future operating environment instead of a Cold War scenario, a senior Dept. of Defense official told service leaders and industry executives at a conference. "We are asking Cold War structures to solve post-Cold War challenges," said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) Brian Sheridan.
The merger and acquisition (M&A) trend of the last few years among aerospace and defense companies is declining in terms of the number of deals, but gaining strength in terms of value, according to a new report.
Honeywell said it has conducted the first flight test of its new AS900 turbofan engine on schedule. The engine, intended for business and small regional aircraft, flew Saturday in a test from Phoenix on a pylon of a Boeing 720 test aircraft. The engine met expectations, Honeywell said.
AUSTRALIA'S Qantas Airways launched a US$160 million telecommunications network based on Internet technologies to connect its airport and administrative offices around the world. The international component of the new QIPNet (Qantas Internet Protocol Network) system was designed and built and is managed by SITA under a $57 million contract. It connects more than 1,200 workstations at 56 sites in 30 countries.
An upgraded space cargo carrier docked automatically with the uninhabited Mir orbital station early yesterday, clearing a big hurdle for the return of a crew to the 14-year-old spacecraft late next month. The Progress M1-1, an upgrade with more fuel-carrying capacity for reboosting the International Space Station, docked on its first pass. A two-man crew had been standing by for an early trip to Mir for a manual docking in case the automatic docking failed (DAILY, Feb. 3). Russia's reactivation of Mir has U.S.
Small rocket companies, as well as the industry giants who keep the Space Shuttle flying, should be pleased with the Clinton Administration's fiscal 2001 space budget request when it is announced Monday, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin said yesterday. "Look at the smile on my face," Goldin said as he declined to give specific figures yesterday.
Kaiser Electronics revealed additional details of its planned projection display system for Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The company said its projection technology offers the Lockheed Martin JSF team a high-performance, affordable, open architecture alternative. "The use of projection technology allows us to leverage the broader commercial display industry without being trapped into single source situations that have been experienced in the past," said Bret Early, Lockheed Martin's JSF Display Systems Project Manager.
At least two commissions are gearing up to take a look at the roles and missions of the National Reconnaissance Office to determine how it should fit into the future national security space arena. One such body, the National Commission for the Review of the NRO, is chartered by the Defense authorization bill. Another is chartered by the Intelligence authorization bill and will take a look at the relationships between "white" and "black" space programs.
Lockheed Martin will expand cooperative initiatives with privately held Solipsys Corp. to cover surface ship programs, including the Navy's DD-21 destroyer program (DAILY Jan. 25).
Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet said yesterday that U.S. intelligence assets, including surveillance and reconnaissance systems, would be significantly stressed by two simultaneous conflicts in East Asia. Tenet, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, was responding to a question from Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.). He didn't elaborate.
NOVATEL of Calgary said it received an order from Raytheon for six more GPS receivers for use as spares in the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System. The company said it has now delivered more than 200 receivers to the WAAS, Japanese MSAS, European EGNOS and other WAAS-related programs. NovAtel said its WAAS standard and ground uplink system receivers are used to decode the geostationary satellite downlink and provide pseudo-range, time and message feedback.
UNION MEMBERS rejected the terms of Boeing's second contract offer but agreed to stand down on a possible strike until meeting with government officials. "If we can get a reasonable contract offer without striking, we owe it to our members to try," said SPEEA President Craig Buckam commenting on the unusual request from a "cabinet-level official" to delay a possible strike. Officials of SPEEA representing Boeing engineers and technical workers said members voted against Boeing's revised contract offer, as originally expected.
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin has ordered the agency's Office of Space Flight to begin preparing the backup Interim Control Module (ICM) for launch to the International Space Station by the end of this year, regardless of whether Russia is able to get the long-awaited Zvezda Service Module into orbit and docked.
RAYTHEON CO. won a follow-on contract worth an estimated $83 million to provide support for the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, aimed at helping ex-Soviet states reduce or dismantle weapons of mass destruction. "Raytheon has worked in arms control operations in the former Soviet Union since 1988, and we view this project as key to our demilitarization activity," said Phil LePore, a vice president of Raytheon Co. and president of Training and Services.
An intercept test of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., was called off yesterday due to an error found prior to launch. The launch was postponed at 7:11 a.m. MST because of an error in the launch sequence of the target, the U.S. Army and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization reported.
