Peter B. Trainer, VP and director of Scitor Corp.'s National Services Sector, has been elected president of the Washington-based National Space Club for 2011-12. Other members of the executive committee are: first VP and Goddard dinner chairman, Suzy Sterner, Aerojet; second VP and awards chairman, Jill Pomeroy, Digital Globe; third VP and programs chairman, Gary Testut, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.; fourth VP and education and outreach chairman, Stephen G.
Mark Dransfield has been elected chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society Flight Simulation Group Committee, based in Montreal. He is a senior director of Mechtronix.
Michelle D. Livingstone has been elected to the board of the Intermodal Transportation Institute (ITI) at the University of Denver. She is VP-transportation for The Home Depot. John D. Bower and Alan Stone were elected to ITI board emeritus status.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman campaigned in 1948 against a “Do Nothing Congress.” One wonders what he would think of today's lawmakers. A dispute on Capitol Hill about funding for the FAA idled 4,000 civil servants and 70,000 workers in airport-related construction jobs on July 23. Other FAA employees worked without pay, planning to collect when their agency's budget is approved. With 74,000 voters out of work, one would expect lawmakers to work overtime to reach a compromise and restore funding. Not this Congress.
NASA has found circumstantial evidence of liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars, at its southern mid-latitudes during the planet's warmer months. Images from the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show dark features appearing and extending down steep slopes during the planet's late spring and summer, fading in winter and returning the following spring. The likeliest explanation is that briny water is periodically flowing from under the planet's crust and evaporating in the thin atmosphere. The findings appear in the Aug. 4 edition of the journal Science.
Chinese space launcher builder CALT has made 170 modifications to the Long March 2F rocket that will loft the Tiangong 1 docking target, says national space conglomerate CASC. The modifications are not specified but when Aviation Week last year saw the launcher under construction in Beijing, officials said its structure had been altered. CASC now says that five unstated technologies are being tried on the rocket for the first time.
EADS is augmenting its Astrium space activities through the acquisition of Vizada, a provider of mobile satellite services. The $960 million deal with private equity firm Apax France is only the latest in a series of purchases that EADS has made in recent months to grow the share of its services business and become less focused on Airbus aircraft sales. The deals are made possible by EADS's huge cash pile, which topped €11 billion at mid-year.
Boeing's Crew Space Transportation vehicle, the CST-100, will climb to orbit aboard the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket through a series of unpiloted and piloted test flights planned for 2015-16, officials from the two companies announced Aug. 4.
Loral Space & Communications says it is focusing on a potential spin-off of its satellite manufacturer, Space Systems/Loral. Earlier this year, the company said it was exploring “strategic alternatives” involving both SS/L and Telesat, the Ottawa-based fixed-satellite services operator in which it is a principal shareholder along with Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board.
The U.S. Air Force is considering plans to build a dual-role, large-scale demonstrator to prove technology for the Reusable Booster System (RBS) space launcher as well as providing a “flying wind tunnel” for hypersonic engines. The RBS is intended as a military space launcher replacement for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle family beyond 2025 and will use a reusable first-stage booster designed to return to a runway landing at the launch site. A sub-scale demonstrator—Pathfinder—is planned to test trickier rocket-powered return maneuvers in 2013.
XCOR Aerospace is placing orders for long-lead structural parts for the airframe of the Lynx suborbital spacecraft, and expects to finalize the aerodynamic design following a final wind tunnel campaign starting next week. The company also plans to start a final set of tests beginning Aug. 8 at Marshall Space Flight Center's trisonic wind tunnel complex. Lynx is a two-seat, single-stage, reusable, liquid rocket-powered vehicle that will take off and land horizontally.
The U.K. Parliament's Defense Committee has effectively given the government's Strategic Defense & Security Review (SDSR) a failing grade, warning that it could leave the military unable to meet national demands after 2015 as a result of cuts made in the last year. The committee members raise a host of concerns about the long-term implications of the SDSR. For one, they are questioning whether the so-called Future Force 2020 can be realized.
Russia, the world's second-largest arms exporter, may seal three new orders worth more than $3 billion for fighter aircraft over the next year, the top Russian defense think tank CAST said Aug. 4. India is looking to sign a new $2 billion contract for 40 Sukhoi Su-30MKIs, according to CAST data, and the Russian defense ministry may soon sign a deal for 24 Mikoyan MiG-29Ks to renew the aging fleet on its sole aircraft carrier, Reuters reports.
Boeing has recorded the 100 737 Next Generation orders American Airlines placed in the deal that theoretically launched Boeing's 737 New Engine aircraft program. Boeing's board of directors must still approve the 737NE program, which is expected to be formally launched in the fall. The American order was one of 113 recorded on the Aug. 2 website listing, along with 10 from GE Capital Aviation Services—two 747-8 Freighters and eight 777-300ERs—and two from Korean Air for 737NGs. A single 777 in a VIP configuration was also ordered.
The Teamsters want a court to nullify a cost-cutting agreement between Republic Airways and the former bargaining unit for Frontier Airlines' pilots, which Republic considers critical for the restructuring and survival of its low-cost subsidiary. The Teamsters, which already represented pilots at Republic's three regional carrier subsidiaries, became the sole union for pilots at Frontier and the regional subsidiaries after a representation vote that concluded on June 27.
General Electric has delivered the first GE38 turboshaft engine for ground tests. The engine, which will power Sikorsky's CH-53K for the U.S. Marine Corps, is 57% more powerful and has 18% lower specific fuel consumption than the T64 engine powering the current CH-53E. The delivery marks the completion of more than a year of tests on the GE38 including 300 hr. of cyclic durability tests to validate hot-section durability, high-pressure turbine aeromechanics, heat transfer survey tests, lube vehicle qualification testing and sea level performance assessments.
Deliveries of general aviation and business aircraft declined 15.5% in the first half of the year, compared with the first six months of 2010, led by a 26.5% drop in business-jet shipments. Manufacturers delivered only 261 jets in the first half, says the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Bombardier and Cessna tied with 69 deliveries each. Gulfstream underlined the relative strength of the high-end business jet market by delivering 40 large-cabin aircraft.
Boeing subsidiary Insitu has introduced an unmanned helicopter that will fit into a police car trunk and is aimed at the law enforcement market. The police will be the first group of commercial remotely piloted aircraft users that is allowed limited access to civil airspace. The Inceptor is a 3.5-lb. electrically powered rotorcraft developed by Marietta, Ga.-based Adaptive Flight Inc. The aircraft carries an electro-optical or infrared camera and is operated from a tablet-sized touchscreen control station.
The final landings of two Boeing 747-8 Freighter flight-test aircraft last week move the company a step closer to a first delivery date of the four-engine jet to launch customer Cargolux in late September. Chief 747 pilot Capt. Mark Feuerstein said late last week the congressional fight over FAA funding had not affected Boeing's flight certification efforts.
Flight and ground tests of the 20-strong Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter force could be suspended “for a few weeks,” according to a source close to the program, after the secondary power system of F-35A AF-4, a U.S. Air Force-variant test aircraft, failed on Aug. 2 at Edwards AFB, Calif., during a ground maintenance engine run. A clearer picture is expected to emerge this week.
Once beryllium was selected over glass as the material to be used for the primary mirrors for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), selecting the best industrial team to make the mirrors was pretty easy, says Scott Texter of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, the JWST's prime contractor.
It has been 33 years since the U.S. Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, which unleashed free market forces for the U.S. airline industry and eventually inspired other countries to start doing the same. So it might seem odd that two U.S. low-cost carriers are in court, challenging the U.S. Transportation Department on exactly what “deregulation” means.
U.S. airlines have every right to raise their fares in the absence of temporarily suspended federal taxes. It is not fair that politicians and some consumer advocates are attacking them for doing so while many taxes are suspended because of the congressional impasse on extending the FAA's authorization.
A search of data generated by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft has revealed a small asteroid sharing Earth's orbit and preceding it around the Sun.
NASA's Merritt Island Launch Annex (MILA) in Florida has been decommissioned, marking another casualty of the end of the space shuttle program. Located on 61 acres of land just west of the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex, MILA provided communications between the orbiters and Mission Control in Houston during launches and landings. The tracking station was established in 1966 by Goddard Space Flight Center as part of a global, ground-based network of 17 tracking stations to support orbital operations of the Apollo program and Earth-orbiting science satellites.
