A production fault with some Thales Avionics angle-of-attack (AOA) probes has caused the European Aviation Safety Agency to issue an airworthiness directive for operators of Airbus A320 family aircraft. EASA says the problem is linked to “oil residue between the stator and the rotor parts of the AOA vane position resolvers” left behind as a result of a faulty manufacturing process. EASA warns that “at low temperatures, this oil residue becomes viscous (typically in cruise), causing delayed and/or reduced AOA vane movement.
The U.S. Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are setting up an engineering review board to investigate the loss of the second, and final, Hypersonic Test Vehicle (HTV-2) shortly after launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. on Aug 11. The Lockheed Martin-built hypersonic glide vehicle was placed into its correct trajectory by an Orbital Sciences Minotaur IV, and initial telemetry indicated the Mach 20 glide phase had begun. Around 9 min. into the flight, contact with the vehicle was lost.
More than a year of in-space testing has demonstrated a nontoxic “green” thruster technology developed in Sweden is spaceworthy, with better head-to-head performance than hydrazine. The system, developed by Swedish Space Corp.
Spacebel, a software engineering company based in Liege, Belgium, will negotiate with the government of Vietnam to build the Southeast Asian nation's second, small Earth-observation satellite. The Vietnam Natural Resources Environment and Disaster monitoring small Satellite (VNREDSAT) program selected Spacebel for the task after the government gave the go-ahead for a second satellite, designated VNREDSAT-1B. It will be built by a Belgian consortium that includes Qinetiq Space, AMOS and CSL.
NASA's Juno probe is more than eight times as far from Earth as the Moon, following its Aug. 5 launch aboard an Atlas V 551 rocket from Cape Canaveral. During its five-year trek to Jupiter, the spacecraft will travel out as far as the orbit of Mars before cycling back around the Sun for a flyby of Earth in October 2013 and a gravitational boost to Jupiter. Upon arrival in 2016, the solar-powered Juno will be hurtling along at 160,000 mph, the fastest man-made object in history.
The National Press Club in Washington has given its Michael A. Dornheim Award to Christopher J. Castelli of the newsletter Inside the Pentagon. The award, named for Aviation Week's late engineering editor, was presented to Castelli for reporting on the U.S. military's failure to put cockpit voice recorders on the V-22 tiltrotor years after being directed to do so by Congress.
In a bid to increase the workshare for Australian companies on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Australian government is making A$8.2 million ($8.47 million) available as a financing crutch for local companies and research establishments. The money is being provided through the so-called New Air Combat Capability Industry Support Program until the end of 2014, the Australian defense department says.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries P-1 maritime patrol aircraft will need reinforcement after the discovery of 15-20 cm (6-8 in.) cracks and tears in their structure. Delays to the delivery of the first four aircraft are possible. The faults were found in several places on two P-1s after ground tests. Some were in the integral fuel tanks and others in the fuselage near the wing root. The structural failures do not seem to be serious enough to require redesign of the aircraft, says the Japanese defense ministry.
The first free flight of the datalink-equipped C-1 variant of Raytheon's AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) resulted in the inert development-test weapon hitting its moving ship target. Launched from a U.S. Navy F/A-18 late last month, the unpowered JSOW C-1 received inflight target updates via Link 16, then acquired the mobile ship target with its infrared seeker and guided itself to the aimpoint. JSOW C-1 is scheduled to enter service in 2013.
Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) Ghost electrically powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) mini-UAV is making its debut at this week's Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Washington. Weighing 9 lb., the tandem-rotor autonomous aircraft can fly for up to 30 min. on battery power and is designed for low noise and ease of use in urban warfare and special operations. IAI has also developed the Panther family of tilt-prop small VTOL unmanned aerial systems.
Approval of hydrotreated renewable jet fuels derived from vegetable oils is a big step toward sustainable low-carbon biofuels for aircraft. But a hurdle must be crossed: scaling-up feedstock production to meet even a fraction of the demand for jet fuel.
France has a complex problem when it comes to flight crews. They seem to be part of a systemic dysfunction when it comes to adhering to chain-of-command decisions, and they often harbor a habit of balking at airline management. In the same vein, company executives, training managers and flight-safety officials show they are still unable to fully understand each other's specific concerns, let alone that of the pilots. The resulting disputes seem to be unique to France.
The recent debate about Essential Air Service subsidies in the U.S. may have been political theater but it has brought the issue to the fore, and legislators should take this opportunity to once and for all conclude a debate that has persisted since the country enacted the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.
On a separate subject altogether, OnAir CEO Ian Dawkins has provided some interesting insight into how the inflight communications industry will develop in the coming years.
U.S. space-technology researchers soon will be able to start work on some of the first projects funded under the Obama administration's shift from an exploration program targeted on the Moon to one trying to enable human voyages beyond Earth's orbit.
After the hugely embarrassing two-week partial shutdown of the FAA, lawmakers are turning their attention to negotiations on a long-term reauthorization bill—something the agency has not had since 2007. However, that does not mean posturing on the Hill is being replaced with “Come, let us reason together.” Lawmakers return to town after the Sept. 5 Labor Day holiday with less than two weeks to agree to a long-term bill, pass the 22nd extension of the Airport and Airways Trust Fund authority or hit replay on the shutdown drama.
NASA bigwigs are bracing for an outside cost-analysis of the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) reference design selected by Administrator Charles Bolden in June, which could be presented to them as early as this week. Booz Allen Hamilton has been working in parallel with internal NASA cost experts to figure out the best procurement strategy for an SLS that incorporates space shuttle main engines and solid-booster variants and the J-2X upper-stage engine originally developed for the defunct Ares I crew launch vehicle.
It might be summer in the northern hemisphere, but the time is coming for U.S. and Russian officials to show their “homework” for moving ahead with another new nuclear arms reduction treaty. So says Rose Gottemoeller, the assistant secretary of state charged with arms control. However, she admits the two sides still have a long way to go in defining mutual terms like what exactly a non-strategic nuclear weapon is, whether an overall limit on strategic and tactical weapons is applicable, and how transparency measures might be implemented.
Legislation in the Senate would impose harsher penalties on those who counterfeit parts and sell them to the military. But the government also needs to change its purchasing methods to keep counterfeits out of the supply chain, says Dan Ellsworth, a member of the board of the Independent Distributors of Electronics Association. The Defense Department and related buyers currently require proper documentation to ensure a part's authenticity.
The Chinese military is either confident that it can already win a battle in the Taiwan Strait, or it is confident that it can keep winning the budget battles back in Beijing. With the ex-Soviet carrier Varyag now mobile near the northern port of Dalian, China has joined the aircraft carrier club. And in completing the ship, with its limited use in narrow waters, the country has left behind one of the guiding principles of its defense acquisitions—that the first priority after nuclear deterrence is subjugating Taiwan.
Taiwan's ministry of national defense caused a sensation during the preview of the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition by displaying a billboard depicting an aircraft carrier being blown up by a Taiwanese Hsiung Feng III cruise missile. The preview was Aug. 10, the same day that China's first aircraft carrier, the Varyag, set sail. The billboard had the Chinese words for “carrier killer” along with a picture of a vessel resembling the Varyag.
Conspicuous by their absence at the aerospace and defense show here last week were many big companies that would normally tout their wares. Boeing, Airbus Military, Rockwell Collins, Dassault and Textron were just some of the major players that declined to appear. Many of them do business with Taiwan's defense establishment, but all refrained from exhibiting for fear of upsetting China.
The first commercial outing for Phazotron-NIIR's new active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar may have ended in failure, but rather than retrenching, the Russian company plans to further exploit the technology.
The dictionary definition of “decimate” is to remove 10%, and that is what could happen to U.S. defense spending over the next decade, now that Washington has set a course to cut as much as $2.4 trillion from accumulating annual deficits.
Lockheed Martin's Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads) is facing an existential threat on Capitol Hill. Senators are actively trying to end funding for the system and renegotiate the U.S. agreement to develop the missile with Italy and Germany. Rather than simply push back on the cuts, Lockheed Martin is making a run at the competition, arguing it will cost the government more in the long term to sustain Raytheon's Patriot missile system than to opt for Meads.
