WASHINGTON PARIS Failure of an upgraded version of the Ariane 5 space launch vehicle sets Europe’s faltering commercial space industry back even further, but ripples from the mishap are likely to reach Arianespace’s competitors as well.

CINCINNATI Eighteen months from now, the new United Airlines most likely will emerge from bankruptcy with much of its long-haul network intact. But downsizing personnel and trimming domestic schedules are virtually guaranteed as the process of rebuilding a streamlined fleet of aircraft gets underway.

WASHINGTON NASA has narrowed the field of candidates for its planned Mars Scout mission to four, and will spend the next nine months choosing among them for a spacecraft to send toward the red planet during the 2007 planetary launch window. Options selected include a swoop-and-grab probe designed to dip into the Martian atmosphere, collect some high-altitude dust and return it to Earth for study by 2010.

WASHINGTON To offset an F/A-22 cost increase that tops $700 million, the Air Force will trim the number of stealth fighters it buys but leave largely untouched its plan to bolster the system’s air-to-ground capability. But that’s not all. Senior service officials warn that unless the performance of the Lockheed Martin-led team improves, the program and potential profits for industry are in jeopardy.

WASHINGTON A Pentagon initiative to combine the military services’ unmanned combat air vehicle efforts is slated to be up and running next year, although many of the details about how the cooperation would unfold are still being negotiated.

WASHINGTON The $1.5-billion debtor-in-possession financing agreements intended to get United Airlines through 18 months of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection set high hurdles for—and impose a brisk pace on—the airline’s restructuring attempts.

WASHINGTON It has been asserted by U.S. analysts that Iraq has a number of long-range missiles and the equipment to produce and store weapons of mass destruction, but the question now for United Nations inspectors and coalition war planners is where to find them.

WASHINGTON The partnership of space agencies that runs the International Space Station plans to pick a larger configuration for the orbiting laboratory next spring, with the heads of the agencies signing off before the end of 2003 on a new plan to “significantly” increase ISS crew size by adding more Russian Soyuz vehicles as crew lifeboats.