The US Clinton Administration is willing to cancel planned non-International Space Station (ISS) shuttle flights to absorb cost overruns on the ISS, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Only one non-ISS Shuttle flight, to deploy the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility, is scheduled for 1999, when a total of up to six ISS flights are planned.
Source: Flight International
China’s AVIC has secured a contract from the China Manned Space Agency to develop a winged, reusable spacecraft called Haolong.
The UK Space Command’s first owned earth observation microsatellite has been launched, providing the inaugural element of a planned space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation.
Orbital launch pioneer SpaceX is being contracted by the American space agency NASA to develop a so-called “US Deorbit Vehicle” that can safely return the International Space Station to Earth via controlled re-entry.
