Posted: Thu, Sep 25, 2003, 11:31 AM ET (1531 GMT)
Northrop Grumman is planning to drop its bid to develop NASA's Orbital Space Plane (OSP) and instead partner with Lockheed Martin, Space News reported late Wednesday. According to the report, Northrop would drop its own bid to develop OSP and work instead with Lockheed in unspecified ways. A Northrop official confirmed that discussions between the two companies were in progress but offered no specifics. Northrop is currently teamed with Orbital Sciences Corporation as one of the three OSP bidders; how this development would affect Orbital was unclear. A Northrop Grumman official speaking about OSP at the AIAA Space 2003 conference in Long Beach, California on Wednesday gave no indication that Northrop was about to drop its bid; in fact, program manager Mark Benton said Northrop and Orbital had settled on a capsule as a baseline design. Representatives of Boeing and Lockheed Martin speaking in the same session presented capsule, lifting body, and winged vehicle designs: Boeing offered no indication which design, if any, they had settled on, while a Lockheed official said the company had settled on a design but would not indicate what it was. NASA plans to select one company to develop the OSP by the middle of 2004.

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