LONDON — Eurocopter has claimed two climb records for its twin-engine EC175 as it moves the aircraft closer to certification. Eurocopter’s two records for the EC175, which have been ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, are a time-to-climb to an altitude of 6,000 meters, performed in 6 min., 54 sec., and a time-to-climb to 3,000 meters, achieved in 3 min., 10 sec. The record-setting flights were performed in February of this year and are claimed by Eurocopter’s lead EC175 test pilot, Alain di Bianca.
In observance of the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report will not publish issues dated Nov. 28 or Dec. 2. Aviation Week Intelligence Network subscribers can visit www.aviationweek.com/awin for updates.
NASA’s Ames Research Center and Ball Aerospace think they have found a way to resume the Kepler Space telescope’s search for Earth-like exo-planets. In May, the spacecraft lost the ability to point precisely in the direction of the new worlds it is trying to locate when the second of four of its reaction wheels failed.
LONDON — A freak hailstorm in Afghanistan left five of the U.K. Royal Air Force’s Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules aircraft unavailable for operations, it has been revealed. Details of the incident, which occurred on April 23 at Kandahar airfield, were documented in a presentation by Marshall Aerospace at the Hercules Operators Council in Atlanta, Ga., in late October and in a citation of an award to the same company from the head of the RAF, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) failed to comply with interim federal regulations in granting recent cost-reimbursement contracts, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) says. “Of the 88 contracts reviewed, valued at about $1.66 billion, MDA and DMEA contracting personnel did not consistently implement the interim rule for 72 contracts, valued at about $528 million,” the IG says in its report, released earlier this month.
LONDON — Marenco Swisshelicopter is to unveil the first prototype of its SKYe SH09 single-engine light helicopter during a ceremony in Switzerland this week.
NEW DELHI — India’s ambitious Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) is shooting for a first flight test in 2014. Defense scientists are conducting a series of tests and have already achieved some milestones in terms of engine development. “We are working on a demonstrator vehicle in the hypersonic space which will hopefully lead us to design hypersonic vehicles and ways to manage the thermal environment,” says V.G. Sekaran, director general for missiles and strategic systems at the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO).
HOUSTON — NASA and startup Planetary Resources, Inc. have formed the first public/private partnership under the space agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge (AGC) initiative to accelerate the search for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a collision threat by using government sky surveys and crowdsourced algorithms. The Solar System’s population of known asteroids is 620,000, but that is estimated to be less than 1% of the actual total.
MOSCOW — MiG Corp. has delivered the first MiG-29K ship-based fighters to the Russian navy under a contract for 24 aircraft signed in February 2012, the Russian defense ministry announced Nov. 25. The first batch included two single-seat MiG-29Ks and a pair of MiG-29KUB two-seat variants. The deliveries will last until 2015.
Ahead of his Dec. 4 retirement, Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a U.S. Naval Academy audience last week that America must continue to invest in technologies that will be important this century — even as future sailors and Marines face more difficult circumstances than earlier graduates. “At times, you will be asked to lead our sailors and Marines with more limited resources than your predecessors enjoyed, and you will encounter situations in which you receive minimal guidance, and for which there is a very small margin for error,” he said.
NASA has engaged in “a number of questionable practices” in the organization’s long-running use of award fees to motivate its contractor ranks to improve the quality of their performance, according to the agency’s inspector general.
EXPORT REFORM: The historic move to transfer key, export-controlled aerospace categories for aircraft and gas turbine engines from the U.S. Munitions List to the Commerce Control List has “created many new problems and challenges for exporters and their counsel,” according to partners in the law firm Barnes and Thornburg. They say that since the reforms took effect Oct.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has postponed the Falcon 9 v1.1’s first mission to geostationary transfer orbit until Nov. 28, as mission managers sort out a liquid-oxygen pressurization issue on the rocket’s first stage. The planned Nov. 25 mission was to carry the Orbital Sciences Corp.-built SES-8 satellite to a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 295 km x 80,000 km altitude and an inclination of 20.75 deg. for Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest commercial fleet operator by revenue.
The U.S. ranks as the leading supplier of defense aircraft for Asia-Pacific partners and allies, according to an Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN) analysis of data provided by Avascent Analytics. The U.S. will have sold about $79.2 billion worth of defense aircraft and related equipment, including both development and production costs, between fiscal 2009-2023 to Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the analysis shows.
LONDON — The U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) has begun training on the first of its upgraded Eurocopter Puma Mk. 2s, extending the helicopter’s life out to 2025. So far, seven of the RAF’s fleet of 24 Puma Mk. 2s have been delivered to RAF Benson, Oxfordshire, as part of the £260 million ($420 million) Puma Life Extension Program (LEP) launched in September 2009. The rest of the helicopters are due to be handed over in the next two years, with the fleet expected to be fully operationally capable in 2015.
HOUSTON — NASA’s recently concluded Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis workshop is providing the agency’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) planners with new momentum for the agency’s two-phase strategy to resume U.S. human deep-space exploration while demonstrating capabilities to find and deflect asteroids that pose an impact threat.
LONDON — The Peruvian defense ministry has ordered a pair of Alenia C-27J Spartan tactical airlifters as the country’s air force modernizes its air transport fleet. The deal, announced on Nov. 25, is valued at €100 million ($135 million) and includes what the company describes as a “substantial logistic support package” for the two aircraft.
Tensions are starting to build in the Asia-Pacific with China’s recent establishment of an “Air Defense Identification Zone” in the East China Sea. The zone, established Nov. 23, blankets most of the East China Sea, including a group of uninhabited islets whose ownership is disputed by China and Japan. The Chinese Defense Ministry says it will take “defensive emergency measures” against unidentified aircraft that fly into the area.
