The Week In Aerospace And Defense
Defense
Dassault Aviation will sell at least 24 Rafale combat jets to Qatar under a contract to be signed May 4 in Doha. The agreement follows a contract for 24 Rafales inked with Egypt in February and a commitment from India in April to purchase 36 of the fighters.
Defense
Saab has unveiled a major upgrade of the JAS 39C/D Gripen radar, doubling its detection and tracking range and giving it the ability to track low-radar-cross-section targets. The Saab PS-05/A Mk.4 bucks the trend toward electronically scanned arrays by retaining a mechanically scanned antenna, and is being offered to Sweden and export customers.
Defense
An air-defense missile system tops the Swedish navy’s wish list of new capabilities for its Visby-class stealth corvettes, says chief of staff Rear Adm. Jan Thornquist. The ships were designed to carry South Africa’s Denel Umkhonto missile, but procurement was canceled in 2005 due to budget cuts. Other weapons, including MBDA’s Sea Ceptor, could be candidates if funding is found.
Space
Efforts continue to gain control of Russia's troubled Progress 59 cargo freighter, which failed to deploy navigation antennas and pressurize its rendezvous propulsion system following liftoff while on its way to deliver supplies to the space station. Russia’s next Progress resupply mission is tentatively scheduled for early August.
Space
A camera aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is providing tantalizing views of Pluto rotating on its sharply tilted axis. The pictures are being produced using “deconvolution” techniques developed to sharpen the Hubble Space Telescope's images before the spherical aberration in its primary mirror was corrected by spacewalking astronauts in 1990.
Space
The U.S. Air Force and six commercial satellite operators are establishing a first-of-a-kind pilot program to improve data sharing and establish better techniques for reporting and tracking space objects. The “Commercial Integration Cell” will begin a six-month trial operation this summer in the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg AFB, California.
Space
SpaceX launched Turkmenistan’s first satellite from Cape Canaveral on Monday, sending the telecommunications spacecraft to geostationary transfer orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket. TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSAT is the first Thales satellite in orbit to use a component – the T&C antenna horn mounting strut – produced via additive manufacturing. It is also the company’s first satellite to feature “flexible” traveling wave tube amplifiers that afford adjustable output power. Credit: SpaceX
Space
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory will test a variant of the electric propulsion system used on Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military communications satellites on the Boeing X-37B spaceplane’s next flight. Set for launch on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral on May 20, the fourth flight of the reusable orbital testbed will test modifications to AEHF's Hall thrusters to improve performance.
Commercial Aviation
Norwegian Air Shuttle will apply for a foreign air carrier permit from the U.S. Transportation Department for its U.K. airline once it gets an air operator certificate (AOC) from the U.K. authorities, CEO Bjørn Kjos says. The U.K. AOC would allow Norwegian to use and apply for traffic rights to several long-haul markets, including India, he adds.
Commercial Aviation
Delta Air Lines is giving senior instructor pilots week-long all-attitude flight training to help the carrier develop full-stall and upset-recovery training programs for line pilots. The upset prevention and recovery training course includes ground, simulator and flight instruction to help the airline prepare line pilots to avoid loss-of-control accidents, which are often preceded by stalls or upsets. Credit: Aviation Performance Solutions
Commercial Aviation
The FAA says airlines could begin using ground-based augmentation systems for satellite-based Category 3 instrument landings with a 50-ft. decision height or an automatic landing by 2018, offering a lower-cost alternative to instrument landing systems. Flight-testing for Cat 3 GPS approaches continues at the FAA’s Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey and through the Europe's Sesar program. Credit: Boeing.