Satellite News

Alliant Techsystems announced that Kent Rominger, former NASA Chief of the Astronaut Corps, has accepted the position of Vice President, Advanced Programs within the Launch Systems Group.

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced preliminary financial results for the third quarter of 2006.

Loral Space & Communications Inc. announced that it has requested that MHR Fund Management LLC consider proposing an alternative to the recently announced US$300 million equity financing transaction that would include the participation of all interested shareholders.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin will announce a decision on a space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope on 31 October.

Work on the International Space Station returned to normal after a docking problem with the Russian Progress M-58 cargo ship was resolved. According to Russian Space Agency spokesman Igor Panarin, “the parameters of the orbit, the parameters of the atmosphere and the state of on-board systems in the Russian ISS segment are back to normal.”

The launch of radio broadcast satellite XM-4 aboard a Zenit 3SL was scrubbed 60 seconds before lift-off, which was scheduled for 2349 UTC on 26 October.