Satellite

WASHINGTON -- Continuing a tug-of-war over a multibillion-dollar spy-satellite program, TRW Inc. has challenged the government's decision to take away the contract it won last year, according to people familiar with the program.The federal government gave the top-secret contract for next-generation signals-intelligence satellites to Martin Marietta Corp. two weeks ago after the company successfully protested the award to TRW.TRW's appeal to the government's General Accounting Office halts the contract for the satellites, which will eavesdrop on electronic signals over sea and land.

Police Officer Sarah Miller has already filled her new headquarters in Columbia's Owen Brown Village Center with large wall maps, informational brochures and community fliers, dozens of coloring books and a bowl brimming with lollipops. After months on bicycle patrol, she knows her territory and now has a spot from which she can direct efforts to safeguard the village she serves. "I wanted as many maps as possible," she said. "Owen Brown can be a confusing area geographically.

CTA Inc., a Rockville-based satellite communications company, said yesterday that it has realigned its corporate structure to focus on areas with high growth potential.As part of the plan, CTA will launch a new business unit called the CTA Space and Telecommunications Co., which will combine several existing divisions. The new business will focus on satellite and ground station manufacturing, spacecraft design, test and flight operations and satellite-related equipment and software.CTA Chief Executive C. E. "Tom" Velez said the company has hired Ricardo de Bastos, a veteran satellite industry executive, to serve as president of the new company.

After a one day delay due to the weather, and another brief delay Wednesday night, the ORS-1 satellite was launched into orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Virginia's Wallops Island. The Air Force launched the battlefield imaging satellite atop a four-stage, solid-fuel 70-foot-tall Minotaur 1 rocket, the largest ever launched from the Delmarva peninsula. The launch, which happened shortly after 11 p.m., was expected to be visible across the Mid-Atlantic region, with past launches seen as far away as New York, South Carolina and West Virginia.

In a move that could make it an industry leader in the production and launch of small satellites, Orbital Sciences Corp. has agreed to buy Germantown-based Fairchild Space and Defense Corp. from its French owner for about $95 million.The acquisition would double employment for Dulles, Va.-based Orbital and boost revenue in its satellite operations "two- to threefold," the company said yesterday."This an exciting move for us, both strategically and financially," said David E. Thompson, president and chief executive.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun erroneously described the TOPEX satellite made by Fairchild Space Co. The satellite will measure peaks and valleys in the surface of oceans to better understand water currents. The article also incorrectly described the company's moves to gain new satellite contracts. Fairchild has invested more than $5 million in new equipment to increase its chances of winning that work.The Sun regrets the error.GERMANTOWN -- James Brown steps back from the towering spacecraft that he has guided through nearly every stage of development and says somewhat boastfully that from an orbit 830 miles above the Earth, it will be able to measure the peaks and valleys of ocean floors "to within 10 centimeters."

NEW YORK -- Loral Space & Communications Ltd. yesterday agreed to buy Orion Network Systems Inc. for about $490 million in stock, expanding its satellite services into new markets.Rockville-based Orion owns and operates the Orion 1 satellite, which covers European, trans-Atlantic and U.S. markets, and has two more satellites under construction. The company provides video communications and other services to about 260 multinational businesses and Internet-service providers in 47 countries.

LITTLETON, Colo. -- Echo- Star Communications Corp. will buy News Corp. and MCI WorldCom Inc.'s satellite television assets for $1.05 billion in stock as the two sellers abandon plans to set up a U.S. satellite TV business.News Corp. and MCI WorldCom Inc. will exchange satellite transmission licenses, two satellites, a satellite broadcast facility and other assets for a 37 percent stake in EchoStar, the No. 3 U.S. satellite TV provider.News Corp., controlled by Rupert Murdoch, and MCI WorldCom acquired the satellite licenses in 1996 in hopes of becoming partners to operate a major U.S. satellite TV company.

The people who take gas and electric meter readings could be replaced by a satellite now orbiting the Earth and capable of reading as many as 20,000 meters in as little as 12 minutes.Final Analysis Inc., a small, privately owned technology company in Greenbelt, built the satellite and launched it Jan. 24 from near Moscow aboard a Cosmos rocket.The key, though, may not lie in the technology but in whether the company can reduce costs enough to make it affordable.Peggy Mulloy, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., said the utility has looked into the system.

Astronauts on the space shuttle Atlantis plan to go fly a kite Monday, lofting a half-ton satellite on a tether resembling a white bootlace 12 miles long.This is no diversion for a summer afternoon. It's a test of technology that future shuttle astronauts may use to drag instruments through the Earth's rarefied upper atmosphere, to loft satellites into orbits thousands of miles high, to generate power and to create enormous space-based antennas.But controlling lassoed satellites in near-zero gravity is no simple task.

Weather postponed Tuesday's launch of the ORS-1 satellite attached to the Minotaur 1 rocket, according to NASA officials, leaving spectators in the Mid-Atlantic to wait for another day. The ORS-1 launch was scheduled between 8:28 p.m. and 11:28 p.m., from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Virginia's Wallops Island which will be visible between South Carolina up to New York and as far west as West Virginia. Officials said that if the launch was scrubbed, subsequent attempts will follow nightly through July 10, except for a three-day window around the planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from Cape Canaveral, Fla., set for July 8. The Air Force will launch the battlefield imaging satellite into orbit the first operational version of the Air Force's Operationally Responsive Space satellite series.

If skies are clear and all goes well Tuesday evening, observers throughout Maryland and much of the Mid-Atlantic region should be able to watch a big rocket launch from Virginia's Wallops Island. The Air Force will attempt to launch a battlefield imaging satellite into orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The ORS-1 satellite will ride atop a four-stage, solid-fuel Minotaur 1 rocket, the largest ever launched from the Delmarva peninsula. Previous Minotaur launches have been seen from as far away as southern New England, eastern North Carolina and the eastern half of West Virginia.

One day last year, a trusted courier for Osama bin Laden answered a phone call that might have been wholly unremarkable except for one thing — the National Security Agency was apparently listening in. That intercepted call helped American intelligence officials track the courier all the way to the walled compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was hiding. The discovery eventually led to last week's midnight assault by Navy SEALs who killed the al-Qaida leader, ending a pursuit that began in the mid-1990s.

A program offering free legal advice in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court law library is about to expand from Annapolis to a site in Glen Burnie. Ask-a-Lawyer will provide volunteer lawyers in the North County branch of the public library starting Wednesday. Law librarian Joan M. Bellistri said the program is expanding because of demand from people who said they could not get to Annapolis or who, because they work during the day, asked about evening sessions. The program has held sessions in other library locations, first in Russett, then in Brooklyn Park last May. Glen Burnie has long been in consideration as a site in the northern area of the county.

Integral Systems Inc., which makes ground-based systems for satellite communication networks, said Thursday that it hired a financial adviser to explore its strategic alternatives, including possible acquisitions, mergers or other transactions. The Columbia-based company, which counts NASA and the Air Force among its government and commercial customers, said it retained Stone Key Partners LLC as its financial adviser. Stone Key, based in Greenwich, Conn., was founded in 2009 by two top former executives who used to work at Bear Stearns, which collapsed in 2008 during the financial crisis.

It happens to me over and over and over again: I am listening to something intently on NPR: news analysis, perhaps, some point being made on a talk program or a hilarious exchange on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." Suddenly, rap blares from my speakers, or maybe the exhortations of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, or the expletives of a show host taking advantage of the non-existent decency standards in satellite radio. Can nothing be done about the intrusion of satellite broadcasts into my favorite public radio programs?

If skies are clear and all goes well Tuesday evening, observers throughout Maryland and much of the Mid-Atlantic region should be able to watch a big rocket launch from Virginia's Wallops Island. The Air Force will attempt to launch a battlefield imaging satellite into orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The ORS-1 satellite will ride atop a four-stage, solid-fuel Minotaur 1 rocket, the largest ever launched from the Delmarva peninsula. Previous Minotaur launches have been seen from as far away as southern New England, eastern North Carolina and the eastern half of West Virginia.

After a month in orbit, a satellite built by Naval Academy midshipmen with off-the-shelf parts from Radio Shack is exceeding all expectations, sending and receiving messages from ham radio users around the world. Academy students and professors hoped the satellite would work for a month, given that many of the parts they used have no history of operating in space. But since the satellite was launched from Kodiak, Alaska, on Sept. 30, it has shown no signs of degrading, and the group is hoping the satellite will work at least another year and maybe another five.

By 5 p.m. today, the fishing vessel Ile de Reunion is expected to rendezvous in the southern Indian Ocean with 16-year-old Abby Sunderland and her crippled sailboat, ending the Californian's bid to circumnavigate the globe alone. The rescue effort that began just before 9 a.m. Thursday, when Sunderland triggered two emergency satellite beacons, would have been impossible without a global system of satellites and electronics, including a computer center in Suitland. Sunderland left Cape Town, South Africa, on May 21. But in satellite telephone conversations with her family at 7 a.m. Thursday she reported her boat was being pounded by 30-foot waves.

GREENBELT — NASA unveiled a new satellite-based system on Monday that space agency officials say should reduce the time needed to locate lost boaters and hikers to just seconds. "Our mission is to take the "search" out of search-and-rescue technology," said Dave Affens, the search and rescue mission manager at NASA, an agency sometimes criticized for not focusing enough on Earth-bound problems. "Our ultimate goal here is to save lives," Affens said. Designed and developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, DASS — the Distress Alerting Satellite System — will be able to locate emergency beacons carried by aircraft, boats and hikers almost instantaneously, officials said.