International Space Station controllers switched off wall heaters in the U.S.-built Unity Node and the external cooling loop on the Russian-built Zarya control module last week as a battery-cycling problem cut power to the nascent orbital facility.
Globalstar de Mexico, the local service provider in Mexico for Globalstar Telecommunications, will begin offering the low-Earth orbit satellite telephone service in January, Globalstar Telecommunications reported. The Mexican government licensed the operation on Wednesday. Lauro Gonzalez, executive president of Globalstar de Mexico, said his company projects about 10,000 users by the end of 2000.
GOOD MOVE: Teaming with the government has been a good move for Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, according to Paul Martin, executive vice president of the business unit. "They really are good partners," he says. "In my mind, partnering with the government has been critical [on some programs]." But, he says, "Unless we do partnership on the logistics side, we are heading down a path where the government will only have money to maintain current systems."
GENERAL DYNAMICS said that retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. David K. Heebner will join the company in January as VP for strategic planning. Heebner has been assistant vice chief of staff of the Army since July 1997. He will retire from the Army on Dec. 31 after a career of 31 years.
Due to a typographical error, Friday's Aerospace/Defense Stock Box did not indicate the direction of change for the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday, Nov. 18. The Dow was up 152.61.
JDAM SALE: Israel is in line to get 700 Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits for $45 million, but this doesn't necessarily mean that a sale to Saudi Arabia would follow. The Pentagon announced the proposed sale of the bomb modification kits to Israel last week, but a spokesman said, "An individual system must not be matched by [an] individual system. There is an enthusiasm for keeping a rough balance or parity of military capability in that part of the world," said Adm. Craig Quigley, "but you can do that via different means.
Subcontractors are hearing the phrase "preferred supplier" more often as prime contractors move to strengthen their supply chains and improve operations, aerospace industry executives said at a conference here. They said aerospace and space primes are implementing measures to rate their subcontractors, looking to provide benefits for both sides of the relationship.
NO JITTERS: Astronomers who use the Hubble Space Telescope for observations will have to wait another year for a new set of solar arrays designed to make the orbiting observatory less prone to "jitters" imparted by the existing roll-up arrays. The second half of the bifurcated Hubble Servicing Mission, now set for the summer of 2001, will install new rigid arrays on the telescope that engineers believe will add stability to the spacecraft.
The Leonids meteor storm apparently did not affect U.S. Air Force satellites, the service said. "Initial indications show that the Leonids storm did not adversely affect our satellite constellations," Air Force Space Command said Thursday. "We are continuing to assess each satellite for any residual damage. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on the status of individual satellites. We may not know for several weeks when an anomaly caused by a Leonids image may emerge."
Boeing and the U.S. Dept. of Labor announced an agreement under which the company will "pay a minimum of $4.5 million in back pay and salary adjustments to female and minority employees."
NASA inadvertently exported radiation-hardened microcircuit optical coupler parts to Russia for use on the International Space Station in January 1997, failing to obtain the required Munitions List export license from the U.S. State Dept. because it relied on the manufacturer's statement that the parts were not on the list, the congressional General Accounting Office reported.
In efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency, prime contractors are finding that direct contact with suppliers is key, executives said Thursday. Optimizing the supply chain involves better supplier integration and better use of e-commerce, Al Mulvey, vice president, UTC Aerospace Supply Management, Pratt&Whitney Canada, said here at Aviation Week's Aerospace Expo '99. If suppliers typically account for 70% of product costs, he said, "we're ignoring more than half our cost" if the link isn't improved. (See related article on following page.)
Last ditch efforts to insert an amendment into the final appropriations bill in the House to allow Lockheed Martin to purchase the remaining 51% of Comsat failed last week. The Lockheed Martin lobby, opposed by House Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley (R-Va.), tried unsuccessfully to get the legislation through, Hill sources said. But, they said, until the last moment it looked like the effort would be successful.
DEEP SPACE: Jet Propulsion Laboratory controllers are awaiting more telemetry from the Deep Space 1 probe as they troubleshoot a star-tracker anomaly that has left the New Millennium testbed in a safe standby mode since Nov. 11. The tracker, which is not one of the 12 advanced technologies the probe was built to test in space, has been glitchy for more than a year, but JPL engineers have not been able to determine exactly what is wrong.
EA-6B FOLLOW-ON: The Navy has started working an analysis of alternatives for a follow-on to the Northrop Grumman EA-6B electronic warfare jet, Lautenbacher says. One option under review is a variant of the Boeing F/A-18, the F/A-18G, he says. "That's certainly a candidate to look at, but we're looking at other ideas too." An F/A-18G probably could be delivered sooner than some other variants, he says. But, he adds, questions remain on associated costs and when it would be needed.
The U.S. Navy's first Super Hornet squadron, VFA-122, received seven of the jets in a ceremony yesterday at NAS Lemoore, Calif. Thirty-four more of the F/A-18E/Fs will be assigned to the fleet readiness squadron during the next two years, Boeing Co. said yesterday. The planes were ferried to Lemoore from Naval Air Warfare Center China Lake, Calif., where the Navy recently completed the flying portion of the Super Hornet's evaluation.
Modification of digital flight data recorders on all Boeing 737s to record additional parameters will be required, the FAA said yesterday. The action stems from recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board following fatal accidents involving 737s operated by United Airlines and USAirways. The proposed rule will require that 1,306 U.S.-registered 737s be retrofitted. The estimated cost to operators was at $158 million.
Loral Space&Communications has renamed its Orion 1 and Orion 2 satellites, as well as the transponder payload that it leases on Apstar IIR, to reflect their inclusion in the fleet of Telstar satellites operated by Loral Skynet. Under the new nomenclature Orion 1 has been renamed Telstar 11; Orion 2 will be Telstar 12, and Apstar IIR(a) will become Telstar 10/Apstar IIR.
Scientists on about 100 different projects counting on the Hubble Space Telescope for data will have to wait at least a little longer for their observations because of last weekend's gyroscope failure, the Hubble senior scientist said yesterday.
RAYTHEON CO. has been chosen to supply base operations support for the U.S. Navy's Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Pacific Division, in Guam. Value of the contract, the company said yesterday, will be more than $300 million. Work is scheduled to begin in February 2000. Raytheon said it was selected from among several contractors and joint venture company bidders.
Space Shuttle mangers at NASA and United Space Alliance will decide today if a new wiring problem that has appeared on the Shuttle Endeavour will further delay the planned Dec. 6 launch of the Shuttle Discovery on an urgent mission to replace gyroscopes on the ailing Hubble Space Telescope.
Fairchild Fasteners rode the aerospace industry cycle as wildly as any other company in the early 1990s. After making a nice profit in 1989 and 1990, the Fairchild Corp. subsidiary suffered from 1991 to 1994 and "lost a significant amount of money," an executive said.
SATCOM SYSTEMS of Burbank, Calif., a provider of satellite-based wireless communications using the Canadian-licensed MSAT-1 spacecraft, has won an FCC license to offer its mobile service in the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and other U.S. territories. With the FCC license approval issued Tuesday, SatCom will provide dial-up telephone, mobile fax, circuit-switched and packet-switched data, two-way dispatch radio and asset tracking.
