Trumped by election fever, NASA does what it can

Orders for platforms that have yet to fly are unheard of in the space launch industry

Can industry really police itself? That's the question the Transportation Department's Inspector General will pose the second time starting Sept. 19, in an audit of the FAA's voluntary disclosure reporting program. The IG's review of the program comes as lawmakers continue to be concerned about the findings of a 2008 Inspector General's audit that found an FAA inspector and Southwest Airlines ducked the system.

Last week, a fresh set of calls urged Congress to address the nation's financial situation. Executives from Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America are proceeding with pre-election plans to warn thousands of workers that they might be laid off early next year. Two former Treasury secretaries, one Republican and one Democrat, said failing to address America's debt problem has dire economic and foreign policy implications. And Moody's rating agency now says the nation's long-held AAA rating hinges on congressional budget negotiations. Sen.

Francesco Caio Title: CEO, Avio Age: 55 Birthplace: Naples, Italy Education: Engineering degree from Milan Politecnico and MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

As Airbus's new CEO, Fabrice Bregier, and COO, Gunter Butschek, make major changes to the aircraft manufacturer's organization, the company's position within the EADS group has been strengthened. Two Airbus executives, Butschek and COO for Customers John Leahy, have been added to EADS's executive board, which now has 13 members including CEO Tom Enders.

SSTL expands potential for what smallsats can do in navigation, Earth observation and military applications.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 with a Centaur upper stage lifted NASA's twin Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission spacecraft into orbit Aug. 30 from Cape Canaveral on a two-year mission to study high-energy particle fluctuations within Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. The $686 million mission is expected to investigate how the belts respond to solar activity and influence space weather. The two 1,400-lb. probes were developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's Living with a Star initiative.