News Summaries for January 5

Loral Wins Orders for New, Refurbished Spacecraft (Source: SpaceToday.net)
Loral has won a contract for a new communications satellite as well as refurbishing an already-built but unlaunched spacecraft for another customer. Loral won an order from Telesat Canada for the Nimiq 5 satellite to provide service across Canada. Loral also announced it had reached a deal with ProtoStar Ltd. to modify an existing satellite, ChinaSat-8, and deliver it to the company as ProtoStar 1. The refurbished spacecraft will provide C- and Ku-band services in the Asia-Pacific region. The spacecraft was originally built in the late 1990s for a Chinese customer, but remained in storage in the US for years because the US government would not grant an export license so that the satellite could be launched from China on a Long March booster. Launch of ProtoStar 1 is planned for 2008.

NASA Gives ATK Thiokol $48 Million Extension For Ares 1 Work (Source: Space News)
NASA has agreed to give ATK Thiokol of Brigham City, Utah an additional $48 million to tide the solid rocket booster manufacturer over until the Ares 1 first stage prime contract is awarded in February.

NASA Workers Fight Layoffs, Seek Spaceship Aid (Source: Government Executive)
A union representing NASA employees has asked for congressional appropriators to adopt fiscal 2007 language forbidding layoffs at the agency and to grant sufficient funding for the next-generation manned spaceship. The agency had planned to cut up to 2,673 employees by the end of fiscal 2006, but senators proposed a moratorium on layoffs, said Lee Stone, a vice president for legislative affairs at NASA's largest union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. "Unless the fiscal 2007 appropriations language includes an explicit prohibition against reductions in force, it will be all too easy for management to fall back on the misguided policy of blaming its workforce for the woes created by an under-funded presidential mandate and of trying to lay off technical staff to make ends meet," he said.

Personal Spaceflight Federation Appoints Bretton Alexander as President (Source: PSF)
The Personal Spaceflight Federation (PSF), the industry association of leading businesses and organizations working to make commercial human spaceflight a reality, appointed former White House space advisor Bretton Alexander as its president. Alexander will act as chief advocate for commercial human spaceflight and work to address regulatory, legislative, and policy issues facing the personal spaceflight industry. Previously, Alexander has held the position of Senior Policy Analyst for space issues at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he was one of the primary authors of the Vision for Space Exploration. Alexander will continue to serve as Vice President of Corporate and External Affairs at Transformational Space Corp. (t/Space), a member company of the Personal Spaceflight Federation.