News Summaries for January 21

ESA Considers Dissolution of Galileo Industries (Source: Space News)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has set a March deadline to determine whether it should force the dissolution of the industrial consortium building Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites or take other actions in response to the consortium’s poor performance. SA in 2006 created three separate boards of inquiry to determine why Galileo Industries S.A., a grouping of Europe’s biggest space-hardware manufacturers that was assembled to build Galileo, has been unable to meet its schedule commitments. The company, which is changing its name to European Satellite Navigation Industries, is composed of Alcatel Alenia Space of France and Italy, Finmeccanica SpA of Italy, Astrium GmbH of Germany, Astrium Ltd. of Britain, Galileo Sistemas y Servicios of Spain and divisions of the Thales Group of France.

Paperwork Extends Dnepr Rocket's Recovery from Failure (Source: SpaceFlightNow.com)
A group of upcoming launches for a converted Russian ballistic missile are being postponed at least two months due to bogged down paperwork needed to clear the rocket for future launches from Kazakhstan's Baikonur spaceport. Payload teams were notified of the postponement last week, and at least three launches are directly affected by the delays. The launch of a second inflatable space module for U.S.-based Bigelow Aerospace was pushed back from the end of January to no sooner than about April 1. Two other flights with a menagerie of small science satellites and a German radar satellite were also postponed from January and February, respectively.

Ben Bova Speaks at BCC Planetarium on Jan. 26 (Source: BCC)
Author Ben Bova will be a guest lecturer at the BCC Planetarium & Observatory in Brevard County on Jan. 26 at 6:00 p.m. The event is free to the general public. Call 321-433-7372 for information.

Satellites Snap Pics for New Look in Ads (Source: Denver Post)
Workers spent six days creating an image of Colonel Sanders using 87,500 one-foot-square tiles. KFC used tiles painted red, white, eggshell, beige and black to construct the new company logo, putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle near Area 51, the remote Air Force test center rumored to be a UFO rendezvous. "KFC and (parent company) Yum! Brands have kind of a long, proud history with space- related promotions," such as Pizza Hut's logo on the side of a Russian rocket and Long John Silver's offer of free giant shrimp if NASA found evidence of an ocean on Mars, Maynard said. "People love outer space. We will look for the right opportunities and certainly be responsive to any company that calls and wants satellite imagery over their facilities or over their brand or their trademark, as long as we can see it from space," he said.