NEW YORK With TRW Inc. in play and financial markets anticipating competing offers for the company, the aerospace/defense industry last week appeared poised for a bidding war. Leading the charge will be Northrop Grumman Corp., which recently made an unsolicited offer of $47 in Northrop common stock for every one of TRW’s.

ORLANDO, FLA. If the U.S. Air Force is going to buy a "smart" tanker aircraft, it's up to Boeing and EADS to make an offer-this week—that the Pentagon can’t resist, senior service planners say. The service can’t afford to buy the aircraft outright, but a lease-to-buy option for the first 100 aircraft (replacing a leaseand-return plan for Boeing 767s initially proposed by Congress) is expected to pass Pentagon and congressional muster eventually.

ORLANDO, FLA. Within the U.S. Air Force, the debate about whether to first build a new tanker or a new intelligence-gathering aircraft appears to have been resolved. The service plans to start both as parallel programs in late 2003. This may be because the intelligencegathering aircraft will give the U.S. its long-desired capability to locate and target stealthy cruise missiles.

LONDON European satellite manufacturer Astrium bolstered its chances of providing NATO's next-generation military satellite communications needs last week when it secured a 2-2.5-billionpound program ($2.8-3.5 billion) for Skynet from the British Defense Ministry.

LONDON The British Defense Ministry is on the brink of launching a program that could prove to be a key asset in forging a coherent strategy for current and future reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering crewed air platforms and unmanned air vehicles.

LOS ANGELES The Odyssey spacecraft has begun its planned 30-month primary science mission, and two types of NASA instruments in use for the first time at Mars are already providing some interesting observations. Jeffrey J. Plaut, Odyssey deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument suite has detected hydrogen on the surface of the red planet’s southern hemisphere.

ORLANDO, FLA, The Pentagon wants an air-to-air missile for its unmanned aircraft. With the fielding of the wide-body Mukisensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A), equipped with multiband radars, the U.S. Air Force would have by around 2010 an airborne system capable of detecting and targeting helicopters, UAVs and stealthy cruise missiles.