The European Space Agency will fly Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers on a Russian Soyuz TMA spacecraft to the International Space Station in April 2004, which will carry the ninth expedition crew. A Boeing Satellite Systems (BSS) spin-stabilised 376 communications satellite, eBird, equipped with 20 Ku transponders and launched by an Ariane 5 in September, has suffered a malfunction that has "partially" affected its operation. Many BSS 601 and 702 three-axis stabilised platforms have malfunctioned in recent years. NASA has picked five candidate missions to be chosen in late 2004 for two Small Explorer flights to be launched in 2007-8. Each team will receive $450,000 for five-month implementation feasibility studies. The Normal-incidence Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer, observing the sun; Dark Universe Obervatory X-ray telescope array; twin- camera Interstellar Boundary Explorer; Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array; and Jupiter Magnetospheric Explorer would each cost about $130 million to launch.
Source: Flight International
