spacetoday.net: Business briefs: August 2

Posted: Sat, Aug 3, 2002, 11:41 AM ET (1541 GMT)

Italian aerospace company Finmeccanica announced Friday that it was purchasing satellite operator Telespazio from Telecom Italia for 127 million euros (US$125 million) plus 93 million euros (US$92 million) in debt. Telespazio is involved with several projects, including the Galileo navigation system and Cosmo-Skymed imaging system. Finmeccanica also purchased Marconi Mobile, the defense communications unit of British telecommunications company Marconi.
NASA announced late Friday that it was exercising a two-year option in its existing space flight operations contract with United Space Alliance, extending the contract through September 2004. The contract covers space shuttle operations as well as ISS training and flight operations. The value of the two-year extension is $2.84 billion.
Pakistan plans to lease a communications satellite in an effort to preserve its last slot in geosynchronous orbit, the IPS news service reported Friday. Pakistan will lease the HGS-3 satellite, currently used by Turkey as Anatolia 1, and move it to 38 degrees East. That slot is the last of five awarded to Pakistan in 1984 by the ITU that the nation still holds, but it will lose the slot if it does not have an operating satellite there by April 2003.