Ground controllers re-established communications with one of two Orbital Sciences Corp. Orbcomm satellites on Saturday after the on-orbit spacecraft completed a self-activated "reset" procedure, the company said yesterday. The automatic reset procedure cleared and reset a processor that was blocking normal procedures of the satellite's subscriber communications subsystem, which is responsible for communicating with ground terminals (DAILY, April 19, page 104).
AT&T and Lockheed Martin said yesterday they have reached an out-of- court settlement of their lawsuits against one another over the Telstar 402 satellite, but the two companies have agreed to keep the terms of the settlement under wraps.
Lockheed Martin, Ocean, Radar&Sensor Systems, Syracuse, New York, is being awarded a $9,950,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for TPS-59 radar modification engineering services and studies for the U.S. Marine Corps. Work will be performed in Syracuse, New York, and is expected to be completed by April 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-92-C-1069).
Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia, is being awarded a $12,746,328 face value increase to a Firm Fixed Price contract for integration and launch of Space Test Program Mission 4 Satellite on a Pegasus launch vehicle. Contract is expected to be completed March 1997. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California is the contracting activity (F04701-90/C0105, P00050).
The Boeing Company, Seattle, Washington, is being awarded a $10,000,000 Firm-Fixed Price contract for long lead materials in support of 12 reengining kits for the KC-135 aircraft. Boeing Defense and Space Group Contract is expected to be completed September 1995. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. One firm was solicited; one proposal received. The solicitation was issued in March 1995 and negotiations were completed in May 1995 This effort supports foreign military sales to Turkey (7 kits) and France (5 kits).
The U.S. Army will have to rely on innovation and integration of modern weapons system to improve its capabilities in the austere budgetary environment, Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Army's departing Chief of Staff, said Friday. "Innovation in military organizations is not a function of money," Sullivan told a National Security Industry Association conference in Arlington, Va. "There may be a correlation between whether you can put it into being" and money, he said, but added that innovation could not stop because funds were low.
McDonnell Douglas' F-15D demonstrator completed testing of an ATARS reconnaissance suite in only two flights, and the company is looking more closely at development of an electronic warfare variant of the Eagle to replace the U.S. Air Force's EF-111 tactical jamming plane, an MDC official said.
The Pentagon has released a Defense Science Board Study on the role of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers that expresses strong support for the institutions and recommends eliminating their congressionally mandated salary caps, a recommendation likely to be controversial on Capitol Hill. Congress has been studying whether the role of FFRDCs could be reduced, or whether their tasks could be performed by DOD and the private sector.
Loral's Globalstar venture said Friday that it has chosen Ukraine's Zenit-2 rocket to launch 36 of its mobile communications satellites into low-Earth orbit in 1998. Three Zenits launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan will orbit the Globalstar satellites in bunches of 12. The rockets will employ Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology developed for the former Soviet Union's strategic nuclear missile program, allowing the satellites to be stacked in three tiers of four each so they can be dispersed sequentially.
House National Security Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) says he plans to mark to the House Budget Committee's $9.7 billion boost of the Administration's fiscal 1996 budget authority request. "Tentatively, we're going to mark up to that [$267.3 billion] and hope that it holds" in conference with the Senate, he tells The DAILY. The Senate Budget Committee endorsed the White House's $257.6 billion in BA and $262.7 billion in outlays. House National Security starts its markup of the FY '96 authorization on Thursday.
Russia's Mir space station, in orbit since February 1986, should be functional until the end of 1997, Alexander Medvedchikov, deputy general director of the Russian Space Agency, tells an AIAA conference in Arlington, Va. He adds that Russian specialists have not excluded the possibility that Mir's life could be extended "somewhat longer."
The NRO's new openness still hasn't filtered down to the Pentagon mail room. Remember the package that was sent to an NRO employee with proper name and address, only to be returned by the Post Office marked "addressee unknown" (DAILY, April 17, page 82)? The package was re-sent, this time with an enlarged copy of the employee's business card, which included the name, title, Pentagon office number and nine digit zip code. It came back 28 days later, this time marked "insufficient address."
The three manufacturer teams vying in Britain's contest to supply 91 new attack helicopters now expect a decision to be announced in Parliament in early July, only weeks before the U.S. is slated to decide whether and how to go ahead with a modification program that could take advantage of work being done under the British requirement. McDonnell Douglas' AH-64 Apache, Eurocopter's Tiger and Bell Textron/GEC-Marconi's Cobra Venom version of the AH-1W all made their final bids to the U.K. Defense Ministry nearly two years ago.
A senior Intelsat official says he's delighted with McDonnell Douglas' plans to develop a new Ariane/Atlas class launcher. Intelsat will definitely consider using the Delta III rocket-once it's sure the development effort is for real, Pierre J. Madon, vice president of engineering and operations, tells The DAILY. Intelsat is a big launch customer, having had two of its satellites orbited so far in 1995, and three more slated to go before the end of the year.
While critics have downplayed the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) declassification of its headquarters structure (DAILY, April 25, page 129), intelligence satellite expert Jeffrey Richelson says it was truly significant. Richelson, who has authored a book on the history of U.S. satellites, says when he filed a Freedom Information Act request not long ago, he received only a small fraction of the NRO organizational structure that was just declassified.
Although he's not on the Armed Services Committee as he was in the House, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) still closely tracks the Ballistic Missile Defense program and says he expects the fiscal 1996 defense authorization to increase the Navy Upper-tier theater missile program and approve the shift of the Brilliant Eyes space sensor program from the Air Force to BMDO. Upper-tier is funded at $30 million, but the Navy is seeking at least $150 million more.
President Clinton took "extraordinary steps to reveal U. S. intelligence" to Russian President Boris Yeltsin to back off the sale of nuclear reactors to Iran, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said. Kyl, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told a breakfast seminar on Capitol Hill last Thursday that he was sure the president revealed intelligence data about Iran's nuclear capability to the Russians to persuade them that the Iranian threat is real.
Ballistic missile defense middle-of-the-roader Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. Friday called for a kinetic-kill, ground-based interceptor national missile defense program that is focused on deployment. The South Carolina Democrat also told a Capitol Hill breakfast seminar on missile defense that a one-year funding buildup of the Administration request for NMD will gain nothing.
The Russians have set May 20 as the date for launching the Proton booster that will take Spektr to Mir. As a result, NASA Shuttle managers have pushed the target launch date for Atlantis on its first docking mission back to no earlier than June 22. That will give the Mir crew time to reconfigure again for the Shuttle docking, and ground crews at Kennedy Space Center a little more time in their hectic schedule to prepare Atlantis for the flight.
Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov have another spacewalk scheduled Wednesday after their successful trip outside Mir Friday to begin readying Mir for the arrival of the long-awaited Spektr laboratory module. The cosmonauts installed electrical cable attachments that will be used to reroute power once they begin shuffling solar arrays to make way for Spektr and, later, the Space Shuttle Atlantis. The spacewalk took about 45 minutes longer than planned, and failed to achieve all of its objectives, but three more are planned this month.
Top 100 Defense Dept. contractors for fiscal year 1994 The Defense Dept.'s Top 100 contractors for fiscal year 1994 are listed in the following table, released last week (DAILY, May 11, page 227). Net value of prime contract awards to each contractor and the value of awards to their divisions and subsidiaries are given. Thousands of dollars Rank Companies 118,114,086
Top Republicans on the House Science Committee have entered a game of political chicken with their Democratic counterparts on the panel, using a project they all support as a pawn in the struggle over programs that lack universal support. Rep. Bob Walker (R-Pa.), the full committee chairman, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), chairman of the space subcommittee, have pulled the Station authorization bill from the markup schedule after ranking Democrat George Brown (Calif.) threatened to withdraw his support for Station.
British Aerospace was expected to pull out all the stops to resume flight development of its Eurofighter 2000 DA.2 prototype last weekend, after completion of flight control software revision checks with partner Daimler-Benz Aerospace. Eurofighter is concentrating all of its efforts on putting in enough flying time in DA.2 to qualify for the flight to Le Bourget and the display program at this year's Paris Air Show, now less than a month away. Officials had hoped the Eurofighter 2000 would make its public flying debut at Paris this year.
Madon says a prediction by Hughes exec Steven Dorfman that there could be a launcher shortage for communications satellites is right on the mark. Madon sees the number of communications satellites that need to be launched ramping up to 35 a year in the 2000-2010 time frame, almost double today's numbers.
The House Budget Committee early yesterday approved the Republican leadership plan to balance the federal budget by 2002 that included a five- year increase of almost $70 billion in defense budget authority over the Clinton Administration's five year defense plan. Approval came on a 24-17 vote that essentially followed party lines with Democratic Rep. Mike Parker (Miss.), who worked with Republicans on their plan, voting with them.
