ORLANDO, FLA. Business jet manufacturers are cautiously optimistic about the next 12-24 months, despite the fragile U.S. economy and the specter of the U.S. expanding the war on terrorism to include military strikes on Iraq. Their reasoning is sound.

CAPE CANAVERAL As urgency mounts for better intelligence on Iraq to guide U.S. diplomatic and military policy, six secret National Reconnaissance Office high-resolution imaging satellites, each costing $1 billion, are maintaining an almost hourly watch on specific Iraqi facilities.

SAN FRANCISCO In what is likely to be the last spacecraft built under a name that dates to the early days of the U.S. space program, TRW has been selected to build the NextGeneration Space Telescope. As it announced the $824.8-million contract, NASA continued its practice of naming such large instruments for distinguished space pioneers.

TOKYO Displacing the memory of three major space failures, Japan has moved its space program ahead with the third straight success of its new H-IIA launcher and now looks forward to seven key missions by the end of 2003. The decision to simplify construction and processing of the Mitsubishi H-IIA appears to be paying off for the National Space Development Agency, which saw the third launcher lift a $265million data relay satellite for Japan’s International Space Station program into orbit on Sept. 10, along with a super-conductivity experiment.

WASHINGTON Congress has created a problem for Paul Revere advocates by contending that the advanced command and control demonstrator aircraft, housed in a geriatric Boeing 707, can be substituted for the purchase and development of the first of four modern 767s.