Cosmonauts aboard the Mir orbital station have installed an analog control device and other hardware that will keep the 14-year-old spacecraft stable for a controlled reentry after the crew leaves it untended at the end of the month, Mission Control Center-Moscow reported Friday.
SPACE RESCUE: NASA astronauts may get a chance to try another satellite rescue like the one they accomplished in May 1992. Hughes is studying whether it can meet NASA's price to rescue Orion 3, an HS-601HP platform built for Loral Space&Communications that was stranded in a low orbit when its Delta III upper stage failed to ignite a second time as planned (DAILY, May 6).
ALSO ON HOLD: Another bill on hold until September, this one in the House International Relations Committee, would keep $590 million in U.S. assistance for the International Space Station program unless it can be proven that the program isn't transferring weapons development technology to Iran. The White House pursuaded Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) to put off consideration of the bill until after the recess. National Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger and Israeli government officials also pushed the committee to delay its vote.
John R. (Row) Rogacki, a 26-year U.S. Air Force veteran who headed the propulsion directorate at the Phillips Laboratory at Edwards AFB, Calif., has been named director of the new Space Transportation Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
REP. RALPH M. HALL of Texas has been named ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, replacing Rep. George E. Brown (D-Calif.), who died last month (DAILY, July 19). A member of the panel since he joined the 97th Congress in 1981, Hall is a past chairman and present ranking Democrat on the space and aeronautics subcommittee. He represents a district to the north and east of Dallas/Fort Worth.
In July, Embraer became the world's fourth largest commercial manufacturer of jet aircraft after Boeing, Airbus and Canada's Bombardier when its order book reached $18 billion. The good news for the Brazilian manufacturer was the successful introduction of the 50-passenger ERJ-145 which broke archrival Bombardier's lock on the world's regional jet market.
Arianespace Flight 118 has been rescheduled for Aug. 12, Arianespace reported yesterday. Hardware on an Ariane 42P is being replaced at the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. The change-out involves four identical electro-valve interface units located on the Ariane 4 launcher's third stage cryogenic engine.
House and Senate conferees yesterday reached agreement on a $288.8 billion fiscal year 2000 defense authorization bill, $8.3 billion more than the White House request. Defense authorization conferees reached the agreement after days of argument between Republicans and Democrats on a provision calling for the reorganization of the Dept. of Energy. Despite the agreement, Democrats reject the provision and warn President Clinton will veto the bill if it is left unchanged.
UNIVERSAL SPACE NETWORK, a commercial provider of satellite ground services co-founded by Astronaut Charles (Pete) Conrad, has named Astronaut T.K. Mattingly its board chairman. He will replace Conrad, who died last month (DAILY, July 12). Mattingly orbited the moon and commanded two Space Shuttle missions during his career as a NASA astronaut. Universal Space Network, started by Conrad and company President and CEO Tom Ingersol, works in the area of shared satellite management systems to save space application costs.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense terminated evaluations of the Royal Air Force's urgent Short-Term Strategic Airlift (STSA) yesterday because none of the five proposals offered "an acceptable combination of capability at an affordable cost."
The U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin Federal Systems unveiled the first prototype of the SH-60R helicopter yesterday at the company's facilities here. The aircraft is the centerpiece of the Navy helicopter master plan, aimed at reducing the number of airframe models in the fleet, said Jim Hargrave, president of helicopter programs at Owego.
TI Group of the U.K. acquired a speciality polymer seals and bearings company based in Germany, a move that TI said would boost its position in aerospace, automotive and industrial sectors. TI Group, a specialized engineering company employing around 40,000 people, bought Busak+Shamban for 800 million deutschmarks ($446 million) in cash. Busak+Shamban designs, makes and distributes specialty polymer seals and bearings and employs 1,900 people.
Moody's Investors Service upgraded the senior unsecured debt rating of Coltec Industries Inc. to Baa2 from Ba3 to reflect the implied support by BFGoodrich Co. since their merger. The combination expands BFGoodrich's product offerings in aerospace while improving its strategic position in the market for aircraft landing gear worldwide, Moody's said.
Boeing is studying the possibility of setting up a manufacturing plant in Mexico, says the Speaker of the California Legislature, Ramon Villaraigosa. Boeing had no coment.
The Pentagon has decided to postpone a full rate production decision on the Raytheon AIM-9X air-to-air missile in order to allow time for all of the operational testing originally slated for the program. The new schedule won't postpone first deliveries of the high off-boresight capable short-range heat seeking missile or establishment of the first operational unit, Jim Raggets, deputy program manager, said in a telephone interview with The DAILY.
Materials specialists at Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion&Power believe they have laid the groundwork for a lightweight follow-on to the XRS-2200 linear aerospike rocket engine that would use advanced composites and ceramics to push the thrust-to-weight ratio for commercial single-stage-to-orbit flight.
Computer Sciences Corp. is on two teams that have won support contracts. The biggest, for $325 million, is for work at NASA's Stennis Space Center, Miss. The other covers support of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.
ARIANESPACE postponed the launch of Flight 118, originally scheduled for yesterday from French Guiana, with the Telkom 1 satellite. It said an electrical system anomaly was detected during the checkout of an Ariane 4 third stage cryogenic engine in Europe. Since the anomaly was detected the day before launch, Arianespace will change out the system on the Flight 118 launch vehicle as a precautionary measure.
The U.S. Army is preparing to move the Common Engine Program (CEP) into the first phase of development, according to Col. Waldo F. Carmona, chief of the service's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) at Ft. Eustis, Va.
Heico's Flight Support Group reported the acquisition of privately-held Thermal Structures Inc. and its Quality Honeycomb Inc. affiliate for $29 million in cash and the assumption of $4 million of debt. Thermal, based in Corona, Calif., makes thermal insulation products and related components primarily for aerospace and defense applications. Customers include major airlines, aerospace, defense and other transportation original equipment manufacturers as well as electrical power generation turbine manufacturers.
TAIWAN would get two Northrop Grumman E-2T Hawkeye 2000 aircraft and related equipment worth $400 million, and, in a separate deal, aircraft spare parts and subsystems worth $150 million. The Pentagon is asking Congress to approve both sales. Taiwan already has four E-2Ts. The spare parts sale would support several fighters and transport planes that are also already in Taiwan's arsenal, including the F-5E/F, C-130H, Indigenous Fighter and F-16A/B. The sale would allow Taiwan's F-16A/Bs to be fitted with Block 15 Mid-Life Upgrade kits.
The July 5 failure of a Proton rocket shortly after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan hasn't lowered estimates of the rocket's reliability, according to the director general of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center.
South Korea is ready to move forward on its plan to buy nearly $150 million worth of AGM-142 Have Nap missiles, a deal made through a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Israel's Rafael. South Korean officials announced in September 1996 that they planned to buy about 100 of the standoff weapons but later shelved the plan because of the Asian economic crisis. With a stronger financial status, South Korea informed the U.S. Air Force in mid-July that it is ready to go ahead with the buy.
The right main landing gear of a U.S. Air Force C-17 airlifter collapsed last September as the plane touched down at an airport in Iceland because the technique of grit blasting, used to clean a component, counteracted a fix that had been added to strengthen the part.
