PARIS -- A French military satellite called Helios 2A will be launched into Earth orbit during the second half of 2004 atop an Ariane 5 booster, Arianespace officials announced Thursday.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chief Executive Officer of Arianespace, and Gérard Brachet, Director General of French space agency CNES, signed the launch service contract for the Helios IIA satellite. The signing ceremony also was attended by French Ingénieur Général de l'Armement François Fayard, Arianespace Chairman Jean-Marie Luton and CNES Chairman, Alain Bensoussan.

Helios 2A is the first second-generation satellite in the defense/security observation system operated by France in collaboration with other European countries. The French defense procurement agency DGA (Délégation pour l'Armement), part of the Ministry of Defense, is in charge of the program, and has named CNES system architect and contracting authority for the space segment. The program organization is very similar to that chosen in 1986 for the Helios I production phase.

The space segment covers both the satellites and ground control facilities. Two satellites are being built by Astrium as prime contractor. It leads a number of European subcontractors, including Alcatel Space which is responsible for the high-resolution imaging instrument. CNES is in charge of the development and operation of the satellite control center, located at the Toulouse Space Center.

The Helios IIA satellite is the 19th military payload for the Ariane launcher.

"If you blow up Lance Bass, you're going to have 200,000 teenage girls who are never going to buy your product."

July 24, 2002

SPACE.com has learned that Russian space officials have given Lance Bass a firm 10-day deadline for coming up with a $1.5 million deposit to secure a seat on an October flight to the international space station, according to a source close to the negotiations.

The deposit and deadline were agreed to by Bass and his legal representatives on or around July 22 following more than a week of negotiations.

Sources close to the Bass space flight bid said money remains the chief obstacle to clinching a binding agreement with Russian space officials to fly the 23-year-old pop star this fall.

Sources close to negotiations say MTV Networks has signed as the media partner for the Bass flight, but is unwilling to front the bulk of the $20 million price tag for the flight. One source said MTV is looking for firm commitments from advertisers to underwrite the expensive undertaking before fully committing to the flight.

Importantly, however, astronomers expect further observations will show that 2002 NT7 has no chance of hitting Earth. Meanwhile, more than 100 observations of the asteroid have helped astronomers continually revise their orbit predictions, and the risk actually grew in recent days, warranting the above-noted classifications. Typically, as more observations are made, an asteroid's odds of hitting Earth decline, often to zero.

If it turns out either of these space rocks is intent on rendering the Dow irrelevant, we'll let you know.

There was another Pioneer 10 contact on Sunday, July 14. The Deep Space Station (DSS) near Madrid (DSS-63) found the signal but was unable to consistently lock onto the receiver. Pioneer 10 was 7.59 billion miles (12.21 billion kilometers) from Earth at the time.

The signal level was reported at -185 dBm, just about at the threshold value. During the three hours pass, lock could only be held for about a minute. The uplink from DSS-14 at Goldstone, sent Saturday, 7/13/02, confirmed that the spacecraft signal is still there (Round Trip Light Time 3D 22 hr 38 min).

Pioneer 10 was launched in March, 1972.

Now within two years of reaching Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft took test images of a star last week that reveal successful results from an extended warming treatment to remove haze that collected on a camera lens last year.

The quality of the new images is virtually the same as star images taken before the haze appeared. In the most recent treatment, the camera had been warmed to 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) for four weeks ending July 9. Four previous treatments at that temperature for varying lengths of time had already removed most of the haze. The camera usually operates at minus 90 C (minus 130 F), one of the temperatures at which test images were taken on July 9 of the star Spica.

"We're happy with what we're seeing now," said Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The team will decide in coming weeks whether to proceed with another warming treatment later this year.

These five images of single stars, taken at different times with the narrow-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, show the effects of haze collecting on the camera's optics, then successful removal of the haze by warming treatments.

The image on the left was taken on May 25, 2001, before the haze problem occurred. It shows a star named HD339457.

The second image from left, taken May 30, 2001, shows the effect of haze that collected on the optics when the camera cooled back down after a routine-maintenance heating to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). The star is Maia, one of the Pleiades.

The third image was taken on October 26, 2001, after a weeklong decontamination treatment at minus 7 C (19 F). The star is Spica.

The fourth image was taken of Spica January 30, 2002, after a weeklong decontamination treatment at 4 C (39 F).

The final image, also of Spica, was taken July 9, 2002, following three additional decontamination treatments at 4 C (39 F) for two months, one month, then another month.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation confirmed Frederick Gregory’s nomination as deputy administrator of NASA, passing his name along for consideration by the full Senate.

Gregory, along with several other nominees, was confirmed in an executive session, the Committee announced July 23.

Gregory was nominated for the number two job at NASA after the White House withdrew the nomination of U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden due to concerns over having an active military officer filling the position.

The space hangar at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum companion facility in Northern Virginia will be named for aerospace legend James S. McDonnell, founder of the company that built America's first manned spacecraft.

The gift will be used to complete the hangar, which will house the space shuttle Enterprise and some 135 other large space history artifacts plus hundreds of smaller pieces. The Udvar-Hazy Center will open in December 2003 to mark the 100th anniversary of powered flight.

Mini Astronotes: Today is the 30th Anniversary of the Russia's Venera 8 parachute landing on Venus. The craft transmitted data as it parachuted down and for 50 minutes after landing. It found that the light on Venus' surface resembles Earth on an overcast day. Also, overshadowed by the Moon landing anniversary is the fact that Viking 1 made the first successful landing on Mars on July 20, 1976.