Restructuring in the U.S. satellite industry is generating new opportunities for fast-growing SES Global to mesh together its far-flung network of operating companies and to mold it into an efficient worldwide system.
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center plans to conduct follow-on testing of a wing design that achieved supersonic natural laminar flow over more than 80% of a test article during initial flights.
NASA/Boeing collaboration will demonstrate 41 advanced technologies for reusable launch vehicles NASA and Boeing's recent signing of a four-year agreement to build and fly a single X-37 reusable vehicle in orbit clears the way for demonstrating a wide range of technologies that eventually could cut the cost of accessing space from $10,000 to $1,000/lb.
The Paris-based Economic and Social Council plans to issue a report to the French government calling for closer integration of French and European space activities and in particular the creation of a new high-level European body to define common space strategy. The council is an independent organization that serves as a forum for discussion of public policy and a source of recommendations to the French government.
The appointment of a former U.S. Air Force chief of staff as board chairman of Pioneer RocketPlane Corp. is expected to accelerate financing and elevate the credibility of the start-up company's air-refuelable space launch vehicle program.
The launch of an advanced version of the KH-11 imaging reconnaissance satellite on a Titan 4 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., Dec. 20, completes a new three-spacecraft constellation that uses an uprated model of the optical spacecraft operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
The Russian Mars 96 mission with an orbiter, four landers and participants from more than 20 countries is scheduled to be en route to Mars this week after a tortuous eight-year development that spanned the collapse of the Soviet Union.
WorldSpace's $750-million investment in a digital radio broadcast network is expected to make its first profits 2-3 years after launching the startup company's three spacecraft in 1998-99.
ASTRONOMERS FROM Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute have discovered what they believe is a thin oxygen atmosphere on Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's 16 moons. The team studied ultraviolet observations of Ganymede made with the Hubble Space Telescope's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph. It showed that the moon probably has an atmosphere with pressure comparable to Earth's atmosphere at several hundred km. altitude--roughly the level of space shuttle orbits.
NASA has formed a five-man incident investigation board to study the loss of the NASA/McDonnell Douglas DC-XA experimental rocket on July 31, when one retracted landing gear leg caused it to fall over and burn after a successful touchdown (AW&ST Aug. 5, p. 22).
NASA is carefully removing human space flight control from the proven realm of custom software and massive mainframe computers and bringing it at long last to the flexible world of networked workstations.
Uzbekistan defense officials have proposed incorporating a formerly classified satellite-tracking site into the U.S. space surveillance network, which could improve capabilities to detect orbital debris.
