Russia delivered two loads of international experiments to orbit last week, when a Progress cargo vehicle delivered 135 kilograms of U.S. gear to the Mir space station and Russian Space Forces launched a Photon microgravity studies spacecraft with French and European experiments aboard.
Arianespace is planning to resume launches on March 14 after implementing measures to fix a cryogenic third stage that failed during a Dec. 1 launch. The European consortium is hoping to resume its ambitious schedule of one launch every three weeks, a spokeswoman said yesterday. At that rate, the two-month slip in Arianespace's manifest caused by the December failure could be made up by the end of the year, she said.
Boeing wants its 777-200 widebody twin temporarily exempted from FAA rules protecting passengers in front-row economy-class seats from serious head injuries, while it works to solve seat design problems. FAA turned down a similar request in January 1993, and since then several seat configurations have been tried, but unsuccessfully.
A Pentagon procurement official yesterday pronounced the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) of 1994 a success in streamlining and simplifying Defense Dept. procurement but told a House committee changes that are coming so fast that the entire procurement system must be reengineered to respond.
U.S. Marine Corps officials involved in the withdrawal of U.N. troops and equipment from Somalia may use non-lethal weapons such as sticky goo and tear gas-laced foam for crowd control, a senior military official told reporters. A small number of Marines have received "very extensive" training to use the weapons, which were recommended by policemen who are part of a Marine Corps reserve unit in Los Angeles, the official said Friday during a background briefing at the Pentagon.
MARTIN MARIETTA Astro Space, East Windsor, N.J., yesterday received a $5.3 million increase to a U.S. Air Force contract for concept exploration and definition support of the Nation Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. The contract was awarded by the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles, Calif.
The U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA) on March 1 will begin "very intrusive and very comprehensive" START I inspections in the former Soviet Union, Brig. Gen. Gregory G. Govan, the agency's director, said yesterday. During a 120-day baseline inspection period, OSIA officials will compile a full inventory of strategic nuclear delivery systems in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, Govan told reporters in a Pentagon briefing.
February 14, 1995 Bath Iron Works Corporation, Bath, Maine, is being awarded a $28,203,173 modification to previously awarded contract N00024-91-C-2800 to exercise an option for Lead Yard Class Services for DDG 51 Class AEGIS destroyers. Work will be performed in Bath Maine, and is expected to be completed by December 1995. Contract funds in the amount of $5,000,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-91-C-2800).
Russian aerospace giant RC Energia spends $20,000 to insure cosmonaut Vladimir Titov's life for $2 million during his recent mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Avicos, a Moscow company, banks the 1% premium after Discovery's safe return Feb. 11. A veteran Mir-dweller who once survived an on-pad Soyuz booster failure, Titov operated Discovery's robot arm during the eight-day STS-63 Mir rendezvous mission (DAILY, Feb. 14, page 234).
U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles plans to kick off a nine-year effort to develop an "evolved" expendable launch vehicle (EELV) for U.S. military and civilian payloads with a draft request for proposals to be issued March 1, according to a Feb. 21 Commerce Business Daily notice.
NASA astronauts will wear tiny battery-operated heaters in the fingertips of their gloves this summer when they carry out the next test of their ability to work in the cold temperatures Space Station construction crews are likely to encounter.
After briefing financial analysts last week, United Technologies chief George David says he won't rule out selling helicopter unit Sikorsky, so long as the price is right. But he quickly adds that there aren't any deals on the table, and haven't been since talks between UTC and McDonnell Douglas on merging their helicopter businesses fell apart last year. Says David, "this is background chatter in the aerospace industry. Everybody is talking about defense consolidation...I call it aerospace blah, blah, blah."
EGYPT has invited four contractor teams to bid on a new satellite communications program known as Nilesat, sources said Friday. The teams are led by Hughes, Martin Marietta Astro Space, Matra Marconi and Aerospatiale.
Although the House stripped the requirement for prompt development and deployment of a national missile defense from the National Security Revitalization Act, House National Security Chairman Floyd Spence (R-S.C.) said Friday that he still wants Defense Secretary William J. Perry a report on options to deploy an NMD.
China's purchase of Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia shows that Beijing is modernizing its military across the board and pushing for power projection capability, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command testified. Adm. Richard C. Macke told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that China's economy is growing at 9% per year, providing funds to modernize its forces.
The Dailey white paper is billed officially as a "pre-decision" document that will serve as one starting point for the NASA-wide "zero- based review" that was underway before the White House ordered the new cut on Jan. 12. Also playing into that review will be NASA's portion of the Federal Laboratory Review and the two Space Shuttle program streamlining studies. But participants in the zero-based review have been warned not to reject out of hand what Goldin has called the "profound" changes it recommends.
Ukraine will privatize its defense industry and allow some foreign investment, Valeriy Ludvitskiy, economic policy adviser to the Ukrainian president, said in Washington. Foreign investment in aircraft and armored vehicle production and a number of other areas provide opportunity for U.S.-Ukrainian joint ventures, Ludvitskiy said at a press conference last week.
The Comanche program office has written its last check of fiscal 1995-for $90 million-to Boeing-Sikorsky, sources say. The contractors have repeatedly warned that they will start laying off workers in late March or early April if the Office of the Secretary of Defense doesn't return $120 million that it's withholding from the FY '95 budget.
Buoyed by the success of Britain's increasingly aggressive export promotion strategy, U.K. Trade Minister Richard Needham says his government plans to do even more, including taking advantage of electronic technology to put British trade officers in remote bases around the world directly in touch with British executives hoping to export. Needham tells a luncheon audience of U.S. and British business executives that the commercial network now in place, built jointly by British industry and government, rivals anything the U.K.
The U.S. Air Force has launched a month-long effort to plan its generic hypersonic research now that the service has withdrawn from the joint DOD/NASA Hypersonic Systems Technology Program (HySTP), according to a top AF acquisition official. Jim Mattice, deputy assistant secretary for research and engineering, told The DAILY Friday that the service will also seek input from the requirements community before Secretary Sheila Widnall decides on the $20 million-a-year AF hypersonic research effort.
The director of NASA's Space Station program gives abehind-the-scenes look at the agency's negotiations with Boeing Co. for Station's prime contract. Boeing came in Dec. 1 proposing it receive $6.6 billion for the work, Wilbur Trafton tells members of the space and aeronautics panel. NASA proposed paying $5.2 billion. Ultimately, the two signed a contract for $5.63 billion.
