The FAA last week awarded Creative Computing Solutions Inc. (CCSI) the first prime NextGen support contract under the agency’s System Engineering 2020 (SE2020) umbrella of awards—which combined represents $7 billion worth of business. Work performed under SE2020 is intended to provide a wide range of support services to the FAA as it works toward the full integration of complex NextGen systems.
SNPE CEO Antoine Gendry and Safran Chairman/CEO Jean-Paul Herteman say they expect the long-awaited merger of SNPE’s solid propulsion activities with those of Safran to be concluded “within the coming months,” following the recent spin off of SNPE’s chemical business. Discussions continue on valuation and other details, but the main stumbling block, they say, is how to share environmental cleanup costs. The search for a partner for SNPE’s 60% share in powder and explosives affiliate Eurenco will take longer, probably until 2011, Gendry says.
The U.K. Defense Ministry and Rolls-Royce have signed a £690-million ($1.06-billion) support contract for the Tornado GR4’s RB199 turbofan engine. This includes moving work on the RB199 engine strip, build and test capability from RAF Marham to Rolls-Royce’s Bristol site.
United Launch Alliance is considering phased development of a common upper-stage booster for its Atlas V and Delta IV rockets to cut costs and improve manufacturing efficiency in support of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELV) program for U.S. government payloads.
An initial purchase under a new U.S. Navy commercial satellite program highlights a looming shift in the government’s bandwidth procurement setup and how this will affect satellite operators. The award—under a five-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) arrangement—carries a minimum value of just $10 million in the first year. However, it ultimately could be worth up to $542.7 million to the Intelsat General Corp. team that won it, and may lead to potential contract add-ons, says Britt Lewis, vice president for marketing and business strategy.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to decide by early summer whether, and to what extent, France should participate in a NATO territorial ballistic missile defense program.
U.S. Air Force officials are in the midst of a GPS constellation realignment designed to improve service to users in canyons, including operators in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan or among the skyscrapers of cities such as New York.
A European initiative to create a dual-use security satellite network could serve as a template for governments everywhere that are hard-pressed to fund dedicated military space capabilities. A key motivator for the dual-use (civil/military) approach is the realization that European governments will never be able to fund all of their growing space-based security requirements as stand-alone milspace programs. Many of these needs can be readily met by civil systems, as has already been shown in the satellite telecommunications area.
NASA will test the launch abort system for the Orion crew exploration vehicle on May 6 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., even though Orion and its Ares I crew launch vehicle are canceled in the agency’s Fiscal 2011 budget request. Work is continuing pending congressional approval of the request—an issue that is very much unsettled on Capitol Hill—and the system was stacked on top of a boilerplate Orion capsule on April 3. The solid-fuel system includes a primary motor that generates 500,000 lb.
The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has emerged as the government-wide manager of a new service, providing commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from spacecraft. But despite all of the resources and ingenuity the U.S. government and industry have put into space, not a single American company is alone capable of providing this service.
Stockholders at SkyTerra Communications have approved the takeover of the U.S. mobile satellite service (MSS) operator by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Harbinger said last September that it would seek to gain full control of SkyTerra, in which it previously held a 48% voting interest, in order to reinforce its influence on strategy. The hedge fund also owns a 28% stake in Inmarsat and has been seeking FCC approval to combine the two entities.
Nelson Jobim, Brazil’s defense minister, told the country’s congress last week that the Dassault Rafale was the only one of the three fighter contenders that fully met the government’s technology transfer requirements. Jobim also reportedly suggested the ministry would submit its final technical report to the government on the choice of fighter within two weeks. The Boeing F/A-18E/F and Saab Gripen NG are the other contenders.
Jeppesen last week introduced its latest electronic flight bag (EFB) application, FliteDeck Pro, which is aimed at facilitating flight crew workflow. Director of Portfolio Management-Aviation Tim Huegel described several of the new product’s benefits compared with earlier EFB versions: an intuitive, simple navigation system; automatic moving map display (above, left) integrated into pilot workflow, and an open framework design that allows for software and data integration across multiple aircraft types and hardware platforms.
Frank Morring, Jr. (Bengaluru, India), Neelam Mathews (Bengaluru, India)
India is moving steadily toward sending its first astronauts to orbit on indigenous spacecraft, but it is taking a “stepwise” approach and has not yet committed funds to human missions, according to the new chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Air France believes it can almost immediately begin implementing on a regular basis some of the fuel-saving measures explored in a transatlantic “green” flight that tested improvements from gate-to-gate. The airline combined a variety of fuel-saving measures on a Boeing 747-400ER flight between its Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) hub and Miami International Airport, following the lead of Singapore Airlines, which completed a similar transpacific flight in February.
The European Space Agency has purchased a second Sentinel-2 for Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) network. Worth €105 million ($140 million), the spacecraft will provide continuity with Sentinel-2A, ordered in 2008. The two 1.1-metric-ton units—to be launched in 2013 and 2015, respectively, to provide imagery of the Earth’s land mass—are each designed to operate for a minimum of 7.25 years, with a further five-year extension if required, ensuring a steady stream of land-monitoring data for at least 15 years.
USAF Col. (ret.) Scott Henderson has been named director of mission assurance and integration and head of Florida external relations for Space Exploration Technologies , Hawthorne, Calif. He was commander of the 45th Launch Group at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla.
British Airways and Iberia still expect to complete their merger in December, after having reached agreement on April 8. The deal largely reflects a memorandum of understanding worked out last year in discussions that now are around two years old. If regulators and shareholders agree to the deal, the latter will get to vote on the issue in November. The entity is expected to have 408 aircraft, carry more than 58 million passengers and generate €400 million ($532 million) in savings over five years.
Hawker Beechcraft Corp. will transfer equipment and operational responsibility for a series of test laboratories to the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) located on the Wichita State University (WSU) campus. Under the agreement, NIAR will perform electromagnetic compatibility, mechanical and environmental testing for Hawker Beechcraft, providing a “unique classroom for students” to gain hands-on experience, says Gary Miller, WSU’s provost.
The first of a new fleet of combat rescue tankers for the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command left Lockheed Martin’s main assembly building in Marietta, Ga., on April 3. Now in the painting facility, the aircraft will soon enter production flight-testing. The newly configured aircraft will be formally presented to the Air Force on April 19 and delivered later this year. The HC-130J is due to meet an initial operating capability date in mid-2012.
Pratt & Whitney is poised to conduct a key fan blade-out test for its PW1000G geared turbofan over the next few days that could decide if novel hybrid-metallic technology will be featured in the production engine. The test follows completion of a bird-strike test on a fan representative of its PW1524G fan for Bombardier’s CSeries in early March. The 2.5-lb. bird-strike evaluation was a key validation of the company’s hybrid-metallic fan blade technology—a major discriminator of the GTF, says Senior Engineering Vice President Paul Adams.
Melissa Maddox (see photo) has become vice president-operations for the business aviation sector of StandardAero ,Tucson, Ariz. She will remain vice president-global security and risk assurance. Honors and Elections
Democrats, as expected, praise the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, and even most Republicans recognize a need to shift attention toward nonproliferation and counterterrorism (see p. 24). But conservatives worry that Obama may not be as committed to supporting the U.S. nuclear weapons complex as much as they would have it. And they question the wisdom of the U.S. declaring it will not use nuclear forces in certain situations; previous policy was deliberately ambiguous.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of the Murray River Basin in Australia—collected March 20 and 21 using the Italian Cosmos-Skymed satellite—show the progress of flooding in the area around Goodooga City, New South Wales. Black areas denote the presence of water. Blue areas indicate no changes between the two images (where there is rocky terrain or bare soil) and yellow indicates objects such as trees or vegetation.
