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HUGHES' SATELLITE RESCUE WINS AWARD FROM POPULAR SCIENCE

NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 1998 -- Hughes Global Services, Inc., (HGS) received an award today from Popular Science magazine for its successful, first-of-its-kind attempt to salvage a communications satellite by sending it around the moon.

The mission, which was the first commercial flight to the moon, took place from early April through mid-June of this year. The satellite is now in a useful Earth orbit, and HGS is negotiating with prospective buyers.

Popular Science selected the historic mission as one of 100 winners of its 1998 "Best of What's New" awards. This is the 11th year the magazine has given such recognition to breakthroughs in products, technology and scientific achievement. The awards luncheon and exhibit took place today at the Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York's Central Park.

The satellite was launched last Christmas Day to provide communications and television services for an Asian company. The launch vehicle malfunctioned, however, leaving the satellite in an unusable, highly inclined elliptical orbit. Although the satellite itself is functional, insurers declared it a total loss for its original purposes. HGS obtained title in April, agreeing to try to find revenue-producing uses for the satellite and share profits with the insurers. Now called HGS-1, the spacecraft is a powerful HS 601HP model built by Hughes Space and Communications Company (HSC) of Los Angeles.

Hughes orbital engineers devised a novel mission to salvage the satellite, using lunar gravity to pull HGS-1 from its angled Earth orbit into a flat orbit nearly parallel with the equator. While NASA has used the moon's gravity to rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts, and to boost planetary probes into space, no one had ever used it to reposition a commercial satellite into Earth orbit. The HGS-1 lunar flyby occurred in mid-May, flawlessly matching the predicted trajectories and performance. Encouraged by the precision of that encounter, Hughes sent the satellite around the moon again in June to further improve the orbit.

HGS-1 is now in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean. That means it circles Earth at the same speed that the planet rotates, appearing in nearly the same spot but drifting a few degrees north and south of the equator every day.

Hughes Global Services is a subsidiary of Hughes Space and Communications Company, the world's leading manufacturer of commercial geosynchronous communications satellites, and a major supplier to the U.S. government of communications spacecraft, meteorological satellites and space exploration vehicles. Hughes built the world's first synchronous communications satellite, Syncom, launched in 1963. HGS provides satellite-based communications services to government agencies and underserved markets in the United States and abroad.

Scientists and engineers from both HGS and HSC took part in the HGS-1 mission. Both companies are units of Hughes Electronics Corporation. The earnings of Hughes Electronics are used to calculate the earnings per share attributable to GMH (NYSE symbol) common stock.