December 5 News Items

Gears in Motion to Help Aerospace Continue Upswing (Source: Palm Beach Post)
Pete LoBello is one reason the aerospace industry is growing again in Palm Beach County. Since 1990, LoBello has run companies here for the overhaul of turbine engines, first for the airlines and then the power industry. He then sold them but has remained in the area each time. "Europeans find their way to the U.S. through Florida, so it's a great place to network with potential customers," LoBello said. LoBello sold his most recent company, Jet Turbine Service in Boca Raton, to Siemens AG three years ago and now is looking for new opportunities. He's part of a small pool of entrepreneurs that serves as the new foundation for today's aerospace business cluster in Palm Beach County. Their companies have turned the area's aerospace and aviation employment around since 2001, when Pratt & Whitney moved 1,300 jet engineers to Connecticut from its local campus.

Today, the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County will outline the makeup of the aerospace cluster during a meeting in Palm Beach Gardens and suggest ways to help it grow. Pratt has been a major employer since the 1960s. But its workforce fell from a high of 8,300 in 1989 to about 1,200 now after moving its military-jet engineers north. After the relocation, the area's aerospace and aviation employment fell to 3,192 in September 2003. Since then, it has risen slowly, reaching 3,580 last December.

Rich DeFrancesco is one of those who remained. He and two other ex-Pratters started Spiritech Advanced Products in Jupiter, which eventually received $4 million in U.S. small-business grants and a smattering of classified contracts for the Air Force and NASA. The company designs propulsion systems for highly sophisticated supersonic- and hypersonic-combustion engines and now employs 14. The county has benefited from the early retirement of Pratt engineers who have been fostering in Palm Beach County what the computer industry has created in San Jose, Calif. "This is a great area for aerospace. There's a critical mass of knowledge here just like that in Silicon Valley in their industry," DeFrancesco said. Visit http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2007/12/05/a1d_aerocluster1205.html to view the article.

Officials: Israel Satellite Launch Delayed by Technical Issues, Not Politics (Source: SpaceToday.net)
Officials in India and Israel said this week that a planned launch of an Israeli reconnaissance satellite on an Indian rocket had been delayed because of "technical difficulties" and not because of political pressure from the U.S. The TechSAR satellite (also known as Polaris), a synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, was scheduled to launch this fall on an Indian PSLV rocket. The launch has been postponed for an unspecified period, and no reason for the delay has originally been given. Media reports in both India and Israel suggested that the launch was cancelled because of political pressure applied on the two nations by the U.S.

China Opposes Weapons Race in Outer Space (Source: China Daily)
China is firmly against the militarization of outer space, and will never engage in a space arms race, a senior official said Tuesday. "The ongoing lunar exploration program has no military purposes," said Chen Qiufa, vice-minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry. "China will adhere to the principle of peaceful use of space," he said, responding to a question if China will join the global space powers to pursue space military technology. Instead, he said the task of preventing an arms race in outer space has become "increasingly urgent". China is worried, he said, because peaceful exploitation of space could be hampered by deployment of weapons in outer space.

NASA Exploration Could Lag: Panel (Source: Aviation Week)
A National Academies "midterm review" of NASA's progress in implementing the recommendations of the National Research Council's (NRC) 2003-2013 solar system exploration decadal survey gives the agency passing marks for now, but projects it will fail to meet the survey's goals if current trends continue. The NRC's review assigned a letter grade for various aspects of NASA's solar system exploration program according to how well they are meeting or not meeting the recommendations of the survey, which are culled from the scientific community. NASA received a grade of "B" for its overall solar system exploration effort, but the report notes a downward trend.

The report notes NASA's failure to initiate a flagship-class mission to explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa, which scientists consistently rank as their highest priority for exploration in the outer solar system. NASA also has "neglected" work on the ambitious Mars Sample Return mission, and should begin "actively planning" for the mission now, the panel says. Overall, however, the Mars exploration program received the only "A" grade of all the major categories in NRC's review.

The committee is "deeply concerned" with the state of NASA's research and analysis, planetary astronomy and flight mission data gathering, which received a "C" with a downward trend. "Research and analysis funding is essentially the 'seed corn' that helps to define future missions and carry them out, and serious cutbacks in this area have harmed NASA's ability to conduct future solar system exploration," the report says. NASA's investments in enabling technologies received the lowest grade in the review - a downward-trending "D" - with the panel noting that "severe reductions in funding" pose a serious risk to future flight missions. Click here to view the article.

ATK Receives $35 Million Contract (Source: PR Newswire)
Alliant Techsystems received a $35 million contract from Orbital Sciences Corporation to continue providing Orion motors, and also celebrated the delivery of its 100th flight set of Orion rocket motors. The contract includes providing Orion solid rocket motors to support programs for the U. S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Air Force through 2010. ATK's Orion motors serve a versatile system of rockets used in commercial and government launch vehicles providing operational responsive access to space and aiding in national defense. The Orion motors, ranging from 38 to 50 inches in diameter and four to 33 feet in length, are used to boost multiple stages of a variety of launch vehicles including; Orbital's Pegasus and Taurus; the Minotaur I space launch vehicle for Orbital and the U.S. Department of Defense; and the Orbital Boost Vehicle (OBV) for MDA's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program.

Vega First Stage Deemed Ready for Flight (Source: Space News)
Europe's Vega small-satellite launch vehicle passed a key milestone Dec. 4 with the second and final test firing of its large first-stage motor. The vehicle now faces three more tests of its second and third stages prior to a scheduled late-2008 inaugural launch, Vega program manager Stefano Bianchi said Dec. 5.

Orbcomm Pegs Cost of New Constellation at $144 million (Source: Space News)
Satellite two-way messaging service provider Orbcomm expects to pay about $6.3 million for each of the 18 satellites it expects to order in the coming weeks, and to launch them between 2010 and 2012 on three rockets costing $10 million apiece, Orbcomm officials said Dec. 4.