BALL CORP., Broomfield, Colo. Michael W. Feldser has been appointed president for aerosol and specialty containers. BATTELLE, Columbus, Ohio Gen. Lester Lyles (USAF Ret.) has been elected to the board of directors. The four-star general most recently led the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. EARTHDATA, Frederick, Md. Maxime Elbaz has been appointed chief operating officer of EarthData International. GOODRICH CORP., Charlotte, N.C.
Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena say they're both anxious and confident as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) nears the most dangerous part of its mission on March 10 - successfully entering orbit around the red planet.
Senators maintained their skepticism March 8 that the Defense Department's budgeting is realistic or supportable, and DOD officials acknowledged that tougher decisions face Washington leaders as soon as this year.
China will delay the launch of its third manned spaceflight by about six months into early 2008 to complete testing of a spacesuit to be worn by a Chinese astronaut during the Shenzhou program's first extravehicular activity (EVA). The third Shenzhou mission had been planned for late 2007 and will carry three astronauts, one of whom is to do an EVA. Two Chinese astronauts flew during the second Shenzhou manned mission in 2005 and one was onboard the first manned flight in 2003.
The House Science Committee is "disappointed" with FAA's fiscal 2007 research and development (R&D) budget request, and believes the agency's Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) should be better supported.
An ESA science team has validated a new evolution model of Titan, based on data supplied by the Cassini/Huygens joint mission with NASA. Finding that liquid methane is not as abundant on the surface of Saturn's moon as expected, researchers now believe that most of Titan's methane supply might be frozen in methane-rich ice and periodically released by cryovolcanism. The ice is thought to form a crust over an ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia a few tens of kilometers below the moon's surface.
VETO THREAT: House Republicans leaders have signaled they would attach legislation canceling a controversial U.S. seaport takeover deal by a Dubai company to the pending $72 billion fiscal 2006 supplemental request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. President Bush has threatened to veto such port legislation, although the supplemental provides $65 billion in additional funds to the Defense Department and is considered must-pass due to recapitalization needs and procurement.
NATO has room and the need for both the Boeing Co.'s C-17 and Airbus' A-400M aircraft as its strategic airlift requirements grow with expanding missions in Afghanistan and Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, head of U.S. European Command and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Jones also told Pentagon reporters March 6 that "there are things in the alliance to look at acquiring, perhaps some strategic airlift to bring into the alliance, perhaps buying, perhaps leasing, working out the arrangement through common funding."
Data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain's Sierra de Los Filabres were combined to produce a false-color image of one galaxy crashing into another at more than 1 million miles per hour. The green shock wave, which is larger than our Milky Way galaxy, represents atoms of hydrogen gas heated as the galaxy, designated NGC7318b (the pink dot on the left at the center of the image), careens into its neighbor.
ASTRONOMY MISSION: European scientists are preparing to take an active part in the support and analysis of data from Japan's Astro-F/Akari infrared astronomy mission, launched from Uchinoura Space Center on Feb. 18 (Aviation Week & Space Technology, Feb. 27).
Four-star commanders of U.S. forces in South Korea and the Pacific told senators March 7 that expeditious fielding of the Air Force's C-17 fleet and the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) to the Pacific Command remains a high priority to support forces based in Korea.
CONFERENCE CENTER: Northrop Grumman Corp. said March 7 that it has opened the Heritage Conference Center, a secure training and meeting facility, in Chantilly, Va. The 25,000-square-foot facility will host meetings, special events, training classes, and secure conferences. The center has a training room, five conference rooms, two executive discussion rooms, and a 320-seat auditorium.
Defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pressed Defense Department budget officials for more details on their fiscal 2007 budget request during a hearing in Washington on March 7, predicting that without such detail passage of the department's spending bill will be a challenge.
The Pentagon on March 7 released the 26-page executive summary from The RAND Corp.'s 3,000-page classified tanker capitalization study, which recommends replacing the aging KC-135 fleet with a derivative of existing commercial jetliners.
Obtaining technology for disseminating, analyzing and sharing information is a "critical investment need," the commander of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) told Congress March 7.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will present the nation's highest aerospace awards on March 8 to the Mars Exploration Rover team and physicist Dr. James A. Van Allen. The Rover engineering and science team will be awarded the 2006 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Current Achievement during a black-tie ceremony at the museum in Washington, D.C.
The Russian space agency has formed a state commission that will investigate the March 1 Proton Breeze M launch failure that left the Arabsat 4A spacecraft stranded in a low orbit. The panel plans to complete its investigation by the end of the month. The group is led by Victor Remishevsky, deputy director of the space agency Roscosmos. Deputy chairmen include Yuri Bakhvalov, first deputy general designer for Proton manufacturer Khrunichev, and Alexander Chulkov, Roscosmos director of payload deployment systems.
Britain and France on March 6 inked an agreement for further exploratory work on a common aircraft carrier design to meet their future carrier requirements. John Reid, the British defense minister, and his French counterpart, Michele Alliot-Marie, signed the deal for their respective governments.
Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., recently awarded a subcontract to Willard Marine Inc. for the first-of-class Long-Range Interceptor (LRI) ship. Further details were not provided on the subcontract. ICGS, in its February newsletter for the Deepwater recapitalization program, said the 11-meter LRI is a new rigid-hull inflatable small boat being introduced for the National Security Cutter and Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC).
