News Summaries for February 28

Pensions Lost in Space (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
After six years of receiving Boeing pension checks that she had come to depend on, Lillian West received a shocking letter in December. The monthly checks had been sent in error and would cease immediately. Boeing, wanted all of its money back -- more than $32,000 -- in either a lump sum or 20 quarterly installments. West is one of seven current or retired inventory managers at Cape Canaveral whose Boeing pension checks abruptly stopped arriving two months ago. All seven had received an e-mail back in 1998 explaining that even though they were being transferred to United Space Alliance, the pension each had earned at Boeing or with Boeing's recently acquired Rockwell International Corp. "stays with you. Period."

Boeing spokesman Tim Neale said the mix-up had been caused by a coding error "that led to payment of pension benefits to a few USA employees that were not entitled to benefits from Boeing." Instead of multiple checks from different companies, the employees' USA retirement pension should reflect all their years of service -- from USA, Boeing, Rockwell and any companies acquired by Boeing, he said.

Russia Plans New Launch Site for Manned Missions (Sources: SpaceDaily.com, RIA Novosti)
Russia is planning to build a new space center within its borders with a launch pad to send manned missions into space. "This will be a new field in Russia where manned missions can be launched from," Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov said. "I will be able to provide more information on the proposed location of the new launch site in a few weeks as we need to be extremely thorough before selecting any new site."

NASA Adds Unmanned Ares/Orion Launch in 2013 (Source: Aerospace Daily)
NASA has added an unmanned orbital flight of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) in March 2013 to gather additional data prior to the first manned Orion flight scheduled for that October. "We wanted to insert an unmanned orbital flight before we put humans onboard," said Exploration Launch Manager Steve Cook. The Orion will be boosted to orbit by the Ares I - a modified five-segment space shuttle solid rocket booster. The unmanned orbital test flight will be preceded in September 2012 by a mission dubbed "Ares 2" - a suborbital flight intended to test the Ares I's prototype upper stage as well as the Orion's launch abort system.

Meanwhile, Ares and Orion engineers continue making progress on keeping system weights within acceptable margins, according to Cook. The most recent weigh-in for the stack took place last week and "things look good," he said. The Orion had been running roughly 3,000 pounds over its weight target, but the latest baseline design shows "an awful lot of progress" in weight reduction, Cook said. The first launch of Ares hardware will be the Ares I-1 test flight in April 2009, which will be a suborbital mission featuring a dummy upper stage. Cook's office features a clock ticking down the days to launch - 778 and counting.

India's Manned Spaceflight Dreams Get Budget Boost (Source: IBN Live)
In his general Budget, the Finance Minister has cornered an allocation of Rs 50 crore for India's ambitious manned spaceflight. Announcing this, P Chidambaram said the Government has earmarked Rs 50 crore to the Department of Space for the Manned Mission Initiatives. Under the initiative, the Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO is expected to undertake mission design, analysis and development of critical technologies and facilities as pre-project activities. ISRO is playing a lead role in developing a fully autonomous orbital vehicle to carry two-member crew to low-earth orbit and safely return them to earth. Last year, leading scientists met in Bangalore and expressed their support to India undertaking a manned space flight by 2014.

Indian Space Science Institute Gets Rs 75 Crores in Budget (Source: The Hindu)
Heeding the call of space scientists to groom talent, the government today allocated Rs 75 crores to set up an institute to train students in the space technology that will be functional in the next academic year. The government also hiked the allocation to the Department of Space, which plans to launch its maiden moon mission next year, by Rs 861.6 crores to Rs 3858.6 crores in the general budget presented in Parliament today. The budget has earmarked Rs 75 crores to set up the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, which will train space scientists to carry out various Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) programmes.

New Conditions May Ease XM-Sirius Merger (Source: Business Week)
As the satellite-radio providers seek Congress' approval to wed, competition from iPods—and a few concessions—might boost their case. The proposed $13.6 billion merger between satellite radio players XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio would seem to violate conditions that government regulators placed on the companies years ago. When the Federal Communications Commission granted the radio licenses to the companies in 1997, the commission's decision specified that they couldn't be owned by the same entity. The companies claim that their merger agreement will nonetheless win approval of the FCC, a view that's supported by many analysts who follow the industry. George Reed-Dellinger of researcher Washington Analysis says the odds of approval are "60% plus."

The companies argue that the market has changed over the last 10 years. The companies now face competition from MP3 players and Apple's (AAPL) ubiquitous iPod, a product that didn't exist in 1997. Now carmakers are starting to put jacks for such devices into cars, which is where most satellite radios are used. High-definition terrestrial radio, multimedia wireless phones, and new technologies such as WiMAX wireless Internet access networks compete as well.

More NM Polls for Spaceport Tax Vote (Source: Las Cruces Sun-News)
Doña Ana County commissioners on authorized a full-scale election for residents to vote on an upcoming spaceport tax, a move that will open the same number of polling places as a typical general election. Commissioners decided to staff all of the county's 106 precincts with poll workers, which will cost about $110,000, said county elections supervisor Lynn Ellins.

Hail Damage Delays Shuttle Launch (Source: SpaceToday.net)
A freak hailstorm Monday caused enough damage to the external tank of Atlantis that NASA managers decided to delay the launch until no earlier than late April. NASA had planned to launch Atlantis on mission STS-117 on March 15. Wind-driven hailstones that left an estimated 7,000 divots in the foam insulation of the shuttle's external tank. The hail also caused minor damage to about two dozen shuttle tiles. Shuttle managers decided Tuesday that the shuttle will need to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to repair the damage, meaning that the shuttle will not be able to launch before its current launch window closes on March 25. NASA is thus tentatively planning the next launch attempt in late April, although no firm date has yet to be announced.