Communication Satellites

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Astrolink venture probably will disband because it failed to raise the additional $2.4 billion needed to launch the satellite-based Internet and telecommunications service, analysts said. TRW Inc., which owns 19% of Astrolink, told employees Friday that the venture has been suspended, said Roger Rusch, an industry consultant. TRW wasn't available for comment.

In a setback for cellular phone carriers, federal regulators Tuesday awarded licenses to Seattle billionaire Craig McCaw and seven others to provide satellite phone access and other new communications services. The action by the Federal Communications Commission came after months of wrangling with wireless carriers, which had sought the valuable airwaves to offer third-generation high-speed wireless phone service, or 3G.

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Astrolink venture has raised little more than a third of the $3.7 billion needed to get its satellite Internet service off the ground and is returning to investors for more money. Lockheed Martin, Liberty Media Corp., Telecom Italia and TRW Inc. have promised $1.33 billion for the project, Lockheed said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Astrolink still needs $2.

India said it successfully launched a 400-ton rocket carrying a communications satellite, entering the small club of countries that are capable of sending commercial payloads into orbit. The satellite entered orbit 17 minutes after launch at 3:43 p.m., said officials at the space center on the island of Sriharikota, about 1,000 miles south of New Delhi. India hopes the launch, the product of 10 years of effort, will mark its entry into the multibillion-dollar commercial satellite business.

PanAmSat Corp. said it postponed the launch of two broadcast communications satellites because of parts shortages and other obstacles.

A Boeing-led firm scrapped the launch of a digital audio broadcast satellite about 30 seconds before the planned liftoff. Sea Launch Co. of Long Beach did not immediately explain the cancellation. Weather was favorable at the Odyssey launch platform in the Pacific Ocean, 1,300 miles south of Hawaii. The launch was supposed to send up the first of two digital audio broadcast satellites, to be known by the names Rock and Roll. XM Satellite Radio Inc.

Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., an El Segundo-based commercial satellite maker, said Wednesday that it won a contract potentially worth $1.3 billion to develop a constellation of satellites that would provide high-capacity communication links for the U.S. military. The contract is the largest since Boeing Co. acquired the former Hughes space and communications business in the fall and marks the first time that the subsidiary has been named as a prime contractor for the Air Force.

The Defense Department said Wednesday it was stepping in to prevent $5 billion worth of Iridium communications satellites from being destroyed and triggering possible "widespread anxiety" when they fall burning toward Earth. The Pentagon awarded a contract to the satellite network's prospective owners that is expected to cement the sale worked out in a New York bankruptcy court. The contract is expected to pay $72 million over two years. The Iridium system, founded by Motorola Inc., the No.

They were beeping one minute and then they suddenly went silent--45 million pagers in all--as a $250-million satellite hovering over Earth spun out of control and stopped transmitting. It was May 1998, the first time the nation was exposed to the fragility of space-based telecommunications that it had come to depend upon for pager communications, data transmissions and much of its television.

Boeing Co. on Wednesday got the green light for its $3.75-billion acquisition of the satellite and components businesses of Hughes Electronics Corp. from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. To preserve competition among companies that launch Boeing satellites, a consent decree announced by the Federal Trade Commission prohibits Boeing from looking at private information that its satellite division obtains from competitors who launch its satellites.