LOS ANGELES NASA has agreed to waive milestone requirements for the X-33 program to help the Lockheed Martin team with its expenses, even though the experimental rocket has not been rolled out or flown. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will advance $68 million of existing program funding to the contractors that was not to have been available until the craft had rolled out and flown, under the original terms of the cooperative research and development agreement.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER Russian and U.S. International Space Station ground con trollers are continuing to assess flight operations and maintenance tradeoffs after the second of eight critical batteries on the Russian ISS Service Module malfunctioned.

RIO DE JANEIRO Japan’s National Space Development Agency plans additional test firings this year of the LE-7 engine blamed for the failure of an evolved H-II rocket, and will place a dummy payload on the first H-IIA, set for launch next February.