News Summaries for December 15

Honeywell Sees Strong Growth in 2007 (Source: AIA)
Honeywell expects 2007 profits to climb between 13% and 17%. "Strong positions in industries with favorable macro-trends and attractive long-term prospects are expected to more than offset modest softening in global economic conditions," Chairman and CEO David Cote said.

Astronauts Complete Half of Space Station Rewiring (Source: AIA)
Astronauts on Thursday connected half of the International Space Station's systems to new solar panels and will rewire the second half during a spacewalk on Saturday. Large solar panels installed in September will supply additional electricity to the station once the rewiring is completed.

Study: Samples of Comet Dust Show a Mix (Source: AP)
Detailed observations from the first comet samples returned to Earth are debunking some of science's long-held beliefs on how the icy, celestial bodies form. Scientists expected the minute grains retrieved from a comet Wild 2 to be made up mostly of interstellar dust - tiny particles that flow through the solar system thought to be from ancient stars that exploded and died. Instead, they found an unusual mix of primordial material as if the solar system had turned itself inside out. Hot particles from the inner solar system migrated out to the cold, outer fringes beyond Pluto where they intermingled and congealed to form a comet.

Florida Tech Wins NASA Microgravity Research Ride (Source: NASA)
Florida Tech's Electrochemical Deposition Experiment (EDEP) team among 34 undergraduate teams nationwide selected by NASA to fly and conduct experiments aboard NASA's "Weightless Wonder" reduced gravity aircraft next spring. The teams will spend several days preparing themselves and their experiments for flight by participating in technical reviews and physical training. The EDEP team's experiment is designed to determine the effects of gravity on the deposition of thin films in solar cells. Visit http://activities.fit.edu/seds/EDEP/main.htm for information.

Space Station Glitch Possibly Caused by Solar Flare (Source: Space.com)
A glitch in the International Space Station’s (ISS) U.S.-built attitude control system may have its root in a massive solar flare that erupted from the Sun this week. “The leading theory right now is that the additional solar activity has taken the normal density of the [Earth’s] atmosphere and it's about two and a half times more than it normally is,” ISS flight director Joel Montalbano said during a morning update here at the Johnson Space Center. “So we’re seeing some problems with our software converging on a nice stable attitude for attitude control.”

ULA Offers Colorado Jobs to 900 Ex-Boeing California Workers (Source: Denver Post)
The United Launch Alliance made relocation offers to more than 900 former Boeing employees in California last week in an effort to entice them to move to Colorado. Those who accept will join an influx of employees staffing the Lockheed-Boeing rocket joint venture that began Dec. 1. The company expects about a third to accept. It's a major step toward forming the alliance's 1,500-strong workforce. About 1,000 former Lockheed Atlas rocket program employees already work here for ULA. Roughly 500 more jobs will be added in Colorado, including Boeing transfers.

Wallops Launch Set for Tomorrow (Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)
NASA and the Air Force said they will try again tomorrow morning at about 7:00 a.m. to launch a 69-foot orbital rocket from the regional spaceport on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore. The Air Force said it has fixed a software glitch that postponed the launch Monday. The glitch threatened to misdirect the solar panels of a spy satellite, TacSat-2, which is the rocket's main payload. The Minotaur I rocket is to release the satellite, along with a second satellite full of NASA experiments, into orbit more than 250 miles above Earth.

Lockheed is Priming Orion Pump - Hires Workers and Leases Space in Colorado (Source: Rocky Mountain News)
Lockheed Martin is hiring engineers and leasing a new building as it aims to hit the ground running on the design of NASA's next-generation Orion spacecraft. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado has 250 or more employees already on the job here. That's up from the 150 who initially drafted Lockheed's winning bid for NASA. And Lockheed has leased a four-story building in the southwest metro area encompassing about 140,000 square feet to house the 600 employees who ultimately will work on designing Orion. Lockheed is eyeing the possibility of leasing a second building nearby that could accommodate more employees involved in human spaceflight work.

Dream Chaser's Countdown (Source: MSNBC)
Space entrepreneur Jim Benson says he's well into the first stage of the development effort for his Dream Chaser suborbital spaceship, with seasoned shuttle commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson signing on as Benson Space Co.'s chief operating officer and chief test pilot. Gibson is the latest former astronaut to make the leap over to private-sector spaceflight, joining the likes of Rick Searfoss (XCOR Aerospace's rocket test pilot), John Herrington (vice president and director of flight operations at Rocketplane Kistler), Jim Voss (at t/Space) and Wendy Lawrence (at Andrews Space). He's looking forward to taking more spaceflights over the next few years than he ever had during his 17 years with NASA.

Benson Space has worked out an agreement with SpaceDev for the first phase in the development of the Dream Chaser - a rocket-powered space plane that would launch vertically and land horizontally. Dream Chaser's design is based on the HL-20 vehicle that NASA tested back in the 1980s. Because SpaceDev and its partners will be using a proven spacecraft design as well as an upgraded version of the hybrid rocket engines that powered SpaceShipOne to the edge of space two years ago, it shouldn't take all that long to turn the Dream Chaser into reality, Benson said.