NASA is unlikely to pick a clear winner soon in the race to provide U.S. human access to space after the International Space Station is built because Administrator Daniel S. Goldin wants competition among companies working on the problem to shape the decision.
Alliant Techsystems has won $4.2 million in contracts from Hughes Space and Communications to build composite structures for two Hughes satellite models. Under the contracts Alliant Techsystems' Space Structures unit will build reflectors for the HS 601HP satellite and antenna structures for the HS 601HP and the HS 702. Deliveries will continue through the middle of this year, the company said.
Allegheny Teledyne Chairman R.P. Simmons said yesterday the corporation plans a major reorganization during this year, including formation of a new company comprised of four former Teledyne companies in the aerospace and electronics segment - Electronic Technologies of Los Angeles; Brown Engineering of Huntsville, Ala.; Continental Motors of Mobile, Ala., and Cast Parts of southern California.
Boeing announced plans to sell its MD 500, MD 600N and MD Explorer series of light commercial helicopters to MD Helicopter Holding Inc., an indirect subsidiary of RDM Holding Inc., a Europe-based industrial group.
Space Systems/Loral is developing a powerful new geostationary telecommunications platform that it claims can almost double the capacity of existing spacecraft, stretching the value of an orbital slot. Dubbed 20.20, the satellite will be able to generate as much as 25 kilowatts of power and handle more than 150 transponders, SS/L said. Its advanced design will incorporate larger and more efficient solar arrays, new power control and heat dissipation systems and ion propulsion for station-keeping. The first spacecraft is scheduled for delivery in 2002.
Raytheon Systems Co. has completed six advanced payload sensors for the U.S. Air Force's Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)-Low Flight Demonstration System (FDS) and has started testing them at the subsystem level, according to TRW Inc., SBIRS prime contractor on the team that includes Raytheon. The Raytheon unit has completed two target acquisition, two target tracking and two engineering models of the sensors. Scheduled for integration into two FDS satellites this year, the sensors will form the "eyes" of the SBIRS-Low system.
India will make its satellites and launchers compatible with Europe's Ariane launch systems to capture launch business. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has signed an agreement with Arianespace that will allow the European consortium to launch low-Earth orbit satellites aboard India's medium-lift Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). India will also make its Insat-3 series of satellites compatible with Ariane, and its big Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) compatible with satellites rigged for Ariane launch.
ENGINEERED AIR SYSTEMS, St. Louis, has won a $36.8 million modification to an earlier contract for 113 Chemical Biological Protective Shelter Systems (CBPSS), the U.S. Dept. of Defense said Friday. It described the system as "a rapidly deployable, self-contained mobile medical station, command post or emergency facility providing a contamination-free, environmentally controlled emergency work area." The contract was awarded by the U.S. Army Soldiers Biological Chemical Command, Natick, Mass.
U.S. AIR FORCE'S Air Mobility Command has appointed a safety investigation board to look into the cause of the crash Jan. 13 of a KC-135E tanker near Geilenkirchen AB, Germany, that killed all four crewmembers on board. The AF said the tanker was on a routine refueling mission as part of a NATO exercise when it crashed less than a mile from the base. The investigation will last about 30 days.
Flight testing of Sikorsky's S-92A Helibus, underway at the company's Flight Development Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., since first flight Dec. 23, is "going very well," a company spokesman said. The medium-lift helicopter logged 51 minutes on its first flight, which included eight takeoffs and landings as well as hover, forward and sideward flight maneuvers.
Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect to resume normal operations on the Cassini spacecraft this week after the Saturn probe automatically kicked into safe mode last Monday, apparently because its star tracker lost its bearings during a routine navigation maneuver. The spacecraft shut down non-critical systems and used its main antenna to shade the spacecraft from the sun's rays, but it remained in contact with the ground throughout.
Controllers in Moscow and Houston are discharging and recharging batteries on the International Space Station every few days to keep them working nominally after their power output started to degrade. Battery "deep cycling" was planned every couple of weeks as a Station housekeeping matter, but the output of the six batteries on the Russian-built Zarya module dipped so low controllers had to switch off smoke detectors and non-critical heaters to save energy on the two-month-old Station as it awaits its next Shuttle mission in May, according to a NASA status report.
A closely held report by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory concludes that risks to the Global Positioning System signal for civil aircraft navigation can be managed, but that steps must be taken to minimize intentional interference. The report, to be released Jan. 29, was commissioned six months ago by the FAA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association. APL was tasked to determine the ability of GPS and two crucial augmentations to serve as a sole means of navigation.
The Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense this year will start conducting oversight hearings to better monitor how the Pentagon is spending its money. "We want to know how was this money spent, what was it spent for, and was it spent within the scope of the authorization and limitations put on by the appropriations," says Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Another hot topic appropriators are debating is the future for attaching legislation to appropriations bills, and whether Congress should put a stop to passing emergency supplementals.
Orbital Imaging Corp. has agreed to buy worldwide sales and distribution rights for data generated by Canada's planned Radarsat-2 Earth observing satellite for $140 million, in the form of a pre-launch imagery purchase commitment, Orbimage parent Orbital Sciences Corp. said.
Lockheed Martin in coming weeks will present Clinton Administration officials with a case for lifting a launch quota regulation that it says will soon stop it from launching satellites on the Proton booster with its Russian partners, a senior company official told reporters Friday.
Moody's Investor Service says 1999 will be "critical" for the Globalstar "Big LEO" low-Earth orbit satellite communications network, with another 24 satellites needed in orbit to support a commercial service startup in September. Moody's assigned a "caa" rating to the $350 million convertible preferred stock offering Globalstar Telecommunications Limited (GTL) announced to finance system hardware (DAILY, Jan. 12).
Japan has pushed back the planned rendezvous of its "Nozomi" Mars probe from October of this year until late 2003 because it consumed too much fuel in its second attempt to leave Earth orbit. Mission planners have decided to wait until December 2003 because the planetary lineup will require less precious fuel to achieve Mars orbit then. Originally known as "Planet B" before it was named "Hope" in Japanese, the spacecraft intended to make Japan the third nation to visit the Red Planet required a second Earth flyby to head for Mars (DAILY, Dec. 24, 1998).
EchoStar's proposed deal to acquire a license to operate a direct-to-home satellite television business from the orbital slot at 110 degrees West longitude owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and MCI Telecommunications has a green light from the U.S. Justice Dept.
U.S. Air Force investigators have traced the "most likely" cause of the Aug. 12 Titan IVA failure that destroyed a National Reconnaissance Office satellite to damaged wire insulation in the vehicle power supply, but the service will keep its fleet of Titan IVBs and Titan IIs grounded until return-to-flight criteria are established and met.
NASA may press the Space Shuttle Columbia into service supporting the International Space Station if Russia proves unable to deliver the Progress and Soyuz capsules it has promised to carry Station cargo and crew to orbit. The oldest of the four orbiters, Columbia originally was exempted from Station duty because it was considered too heavy for the job. But once it delivers the Chandra Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) to orbit in April, Columbia is scheduled to receive special plumbing that will allow it to reboost the Station (DAILY, Jan. 15).
Eutelsat, working with European partners, is getting ready to start commercial operation of a satellite-based high-speed Internet service. It will allow individual users to access the Web with a 60 cm dish antenna and the direct-to-home television satellite operator's network of Hot Bird satellites.
