Two Russian cosmonauts on the Russian space station Mir conducted a pair of spacewalks earlier this month, while they and American astronaut John Blaha successfully harvested a tiny crop of wheat grown in weightlessness.
     Cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Alexander Kalery spent six hours outside the space station on December 2. They connected the second section of a U.S.-made solar panel delivered to the station earlier this year by the space shuttle. The first section had already been connected.
     On a second spacewalk December 9, Korzun and Kalery activated the panel during a six and a half hour spacewalk. During both spacewalks American astronaut John Blaha remained inside Mir, watching over the station controls and making a video of the cosmonauts' work.
     As part of a joint U.S.-Russian experiment, Blaha harvested a tiny crop of wheat that was the first crop of healthy plants to go through a full life cycle in space.
     Blaha harvested 32 plans of a special "superdwarf" variety of wheat to see if weightlessness would cause any problems with the growth of plants. According to early reports the wheat grew normally and produced the desired seed-containing heads.
     "Completion of a plant life cycle in microgravity would prove that there are no 'show stoppers' -- no stages in the life cycle that absolutely require gravity for completion," said Dr. Frank Salisbury of Utah State University.
     The success of the experiments paves the way for the use of wheat and other crops in the life-support systems of future long-duration space missions, such as a human mission to Mars.
     Blaha will return to Earth next month when the shuttle Atlantis docks with Mir. His place on Mir will be taken by Jerry Linenger. Korzun and Kalery will remain in Mir until their relief crew arrives in February.

The Boeing company completed its acquisition of Rockwell International's aerospace and defense units December 6, giving the aerospace giant a larger role in the space program.
     The new Boeing units have been organized as Boeing North American, a name harking back to the days of North American Aerospace, the company that merged with Rockwell in the 1970s.
     Boeing North American includes the Space Systems Division, the prime contractor for the space shuttle orbiter and Rocketdyne, responsible for the space shuttle main engines as well as engines for Atlas and Delta rockets and the linear aerospike engine for the X-33.
     Boeing North American also becomes one half of the United Space Alliance, a joint venture with Lockheed Martin that serves as the prime contractor for space shuttle operations.
     "This is a major milestone for Boeing," said Jerry King, president of Boeing Defense and Space Group, under which Boeing North American is a subsidiary. "It accelerates us to achieving our 20-year vision, which calls for Boeing to be a fully integrated aerospace company designing, producing and supporting commercial airplanes, defense systems, and defense and civil space systems."
     To gain Rockwell's aerospace and defense divisions, Boeing issues $860 million in stock and assumed over $2.1 billion in Rockwell debt. Rockwell is repositioning itself as a high-technology company.

The launches of two commercial satellites using Russian Proton boosters has been delayed until February or March, Russian officials reported December 12.
     The Tempo and Iridium launches had been postponed for "organizational reasons", a spokesman for the Krunichev State Space Center told Reuters.
     Sergei Zhiltsov said the delay had nothing to do with the failure of the fourth stage of a Proton booster last month, which caused the Mars 96 spacecraft to fall back to Earth just hours after launch.
     However, the Russian news agency Tass reported that the launched would have been delayed in any event because of a ban on Proton launched while an investigation into the cause of the Mars 96 launch failure is in progress.
     The Krunichev center had launched two satellites for foreign customers in 1996, and has plans to launch up to 20 satellites by the year 2000.