GEORGE E. MUELLER, chief executive officer of Kistler Aerospace Corp., received the 1999 Theodore Von Karman Award from the International Academy of Astronautics at the organization's annual awards dinner in Amsterdam. Mueller was honored for his leading role in human space flight, both in the Apollo lunar missions and in development of NASA's Space Shuttle.
NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) spacecraft has detected a slightly smaller ozone "hole" over the Antarctic this year than it measured last year, but the shrinkage is seen as more a result of local weather than a change for the better in the atmosphere's health. Measurements made between mid-August and early October by the Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite found the area of ozone depletion covered 9.8 million square miles on Sept. 15, down slightly from the record 10.5 million square miles measured on Sept. 19, 1998.
The U.S. Air Force has recommended against accelerating a long-range plan to modernize Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, GPS program officials said. Col. Neil McCasland, deputy GPS program director at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center here, said the AF has recommended to the Office of Secretary of Defense that it stick with a plan providing improved GPS capabilities in 2013.
A Fairchild Aerospace spokesman declined to confirm a Bloomberg report Friday that Clayton Dubilier&Rice, a New York-based investment firm, will buy a majority holding in the regional jet manufacturer. The report said the company would buy the 56% holding from Chairman Carl Albert for approximately $250 million. The Fairchild spokesman did confirm that the company has stepped up its efforts to raise additional equity for the development of the 728JET and 428JET.
ARMY OVERHAUL: U.S. Army leaders have been mapping out a plan to revamp the service's strategic vision, manpower, modernization and headquarters staff in an effort to make the service more lethal and more deployable. Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki will announce the findings this week at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington. "Everything has been on the table," an Army official said.
ONE-METER: Space Imaging plans to release the first image obtained by its new Ikonos commercial remote sensing satellite tomorrow at a press conference at company headquarters in Thornton, Colo. The digital Kodak camera aboard has produced an image of "a North American city" with a ground resolution of one meter. Although the first image from the Lockheed Martin spacecraft launched last month (DAILY, Sept. 27) will be black and white, color images will be forthcoming as satellite checkout continues. The inaugural image will be posted on the Internet at 1:30 p.m.
Y2K READY: Critical computer systems of the British Ministry of Defense are 96% ready for the year 2000, military leaders there say. Work on the last few critical systems will be completed by the end of year. All airplanes, submarines and ships are ready, and "there is no risk of a nuclear weapon explosion or of nuclear weapons being launched accidentally as a result of any computer failure whether Y2K related or not."
COMMUNICATION COVERAGE: The Air Force might be able to avoid a serious gap in communications coverage if it can't afford to buy a Milstar satellite to replace one launched into the wrong orbit. Lt. Col. Toni Arnold, a deputy Milstar program manager at the AF's Space and Missile Systems Center, says it depends on where three other Milstars are placed. A number of tradeoff studies are under review, although a decision on whether to buy a replacement was expected before the start of October, Arnold says.
TAXI!: Once the International Station is up and running, there shouldn't be any shortage of ways to move supplies, fuel, equipment and other payloads around it. Both Orbital Sciences Corp. and Aerospatiale Matra have proposed space tugs that could be combined with expendable launch vehicles to make Station deliveries.
NASA managers have decided to slip the planned urgent Space Shuttle mission to replace gyros on the Hubble Space Telescope until Dec. 2, ruling out any other missions in 1999 and pushing the next flight to the International Space Station back to February 2000.
COMMERCIAL UAVS: NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center is putting its fleet of Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) unpiloted aerial vehicles on display Wednesday for potential commercial users of the long-duration, high-altitude sensor platforms.
Lockheed Martin and Israel Aircraft Industries' Elta Electronics unit signed a cooperative agreement Oct. 3 in Israel to market Elta's synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. The agreement also provides for Lockheed Martin to manufacture the system in the U.S. "This agreement further broadens Lockheed Martin's participation in fixed-wing avionics, with a state-of-the-art reconnaissance radar system that's flying now," said William O. Schmieder, vice president of domestic business development at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.
BAD CHIP: Launch of the next Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft, originally scheduled last week aboard a Titan II from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., has been delayed because of a bad chip in one of the satellite's solid-stage recorders. Workers will remove the Lockheed Martin satellite from its launch vehicle so the chip can be replaced.
Anthony G. (Tony) Tuffo, a 34-year veteran of Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space and its predecessor companies, has been named president of the unit in Sunnyvale, Calif., Lockheed Martin reported Friday.
LOSS OF INTERFACE: Problems getting Russia's Zvezda Service Module ready for launch to the International Space Station aren't limited to the Russian module and its European computers. Testing at Baikonur Cosmodrome revealed the problem extends to interfaces between the Zvezda hardware, supplied by the European Space Agency, and computers on the U.S. side of the orbiting facility. Station engineers who held technical meetings in Moscow late last month believe the problem can be fixed with software patches, but the standdown in the U.S.
Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center plan to use a newly installed 50-foot-long magnetic levitation track to study aerodynamics and other factors involved in using maglev to cut takeoff weight for space launch vehicles.
MORE IS LESS: "What is needed in European security is not 'less U.S.' but 'more Europe,'" former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana tells the National Defense University in Washington during a recent visit. Solana left the post Oct. 1 to lead the military pillar of the European Union. "Creating such a stronger Europe ... is about creating a more viable partner for the United States," Solana says. "It is not about European self-assertion for its own sake. Europe and America will - and must - remain a team.
"ACC nearly ready to go with paperless supply shipments," an article in the Sept. 28 edition of Aerospace Daily, was attributed in part to Knowledge Business, an affiliate of Aerospace Daily. The article did appear in the Sept. 22 issue of Knowledge Business, but in fact was based on a U.S. Air Force release. In addition, the article said the Supply Asset Tracking System 2, or SATS, "is designed to replace the standard base supply system, or SBSS...." SATS will complement SBSS. Also, the web address cited at the end of the article is not available to commercial users.
VSE Corp.'s Value Systems Services Div. (VSS), Lexington Park, Md., has been awarded a five-year blanket purchase agreement worth up to $42 million to support the U.S. Navy's Engineering Investigations (EI) safety program related to naval aircraft and aircraft systems and subsystems.
Lockheed Martin Aircraft and Logistics Centers yesterday announced launch of an L-1011 freighter conversion program with Intercapital Aviation of London providing the initial order of 13 aircraft with a potential of up to 40. The initial purchase of aircraft is from Delta. The conversions will be done at Lockheed Martin's Greenville, S.C., aircraft center. The cargo doors and conversion kits will be manufactured at its plant in Cordoba, Argentina.
Libya wants to buy Airbus jets, and says its flag carrier has signed an agreement with the European consortium to buy some of the planes. Libyan Arab Airlines "expressed its interest [in] the purchase of 24 Airbus aircraft, they have chosen Airbus, but no contract was signed," a spokeswoman for the European consortium said Friday in Toulouse, France.
GAPFILLER RFP: The Air Force is slated to release a draft request for proposals this week for its Wideband Gapfiller satellite communications program, says Janice Smith, director of advanced programs at the Air Force's MILSATCOM Joint Program Office, Los Angeles AFB, Calif. The final RFP is due out April 1, with contract award expected a year from now. The Gapfiller would provide a capability to replace the services' Direct Broadcast Service and DSCS satellites.
House and Senate appropriations conferees last week ordered an independent study of the Triana whole-Earth satellite conceived by Vice President Gore as part of their NASA funding agreement for fiscal 2000.
U.S. forces are facing a growing threat from cruise missiles, according to Rear Adm. John V. Chenevey, the Navy's program executive officer for Cruise Missiles and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
