Aviation Week & Space Technology

The European Space Agency has inaugurated operations with a new tracking station on Santa Maria Island in the Azores that will further expand Europe’s Estrack network. The station’s 5.5-meter (18-ft.) antenna will provide a large footprint over the Atlantic Ocean, improving ESA’s ability to track launches from its Kourou, French Guiana, space center of new types of hardware—the Automated Transfer Vehicle, Soyuz and Vega—as well as the existing Ariane 5 booster and the agency’s expanding Earth observation satellite system.

Europe and Japan are preparing a joint mission to Mercury that will build on data from NASA’s Messenger probe and greatly expand scientists’ scant knowledge of this strange planet.

The global fleet of freighter aircraft continues to expand, based on expectations of increasing demand for airfreight services due to globalization and the accompanying expansion of world trade. There is a well-documented link between economic growth and the demand for airfreight services. During the past three decades, airfreight traffic grew at a rate about twice as fast as the growth of the world’s aggregate gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, predictions of 3% annual growth in global GDP translate into 6% growth in annual demand for airfreight.

The Italian air force is making a bid to perform expanded Eurofighter trials and is refining its own combat tactics following intensive flight evaluations using the Typhoon in mock air-to-air combat.

Runway status lights constitute a “viable technology” that would provide timely collision warnings directly to flight crews, but key technical issues must be resolved. The U.S. Transportation Dept.’s Inspector General Office presents this and other findings in a report on its review of the FAA’s technology implementation plan.

Gil Schnabel (see photo) has been promoted to manager of FlightSafety International ’s Detroit Metro/Toledo Learning Center from assistant manager of the Dallas/Fort Worth Learning Center. He succeeds Blaine Little, who has become FSI’s manager of airline marketing. Brenda Seaman (see photo) has been named assistant director of market research. She was assistant manager of the Atlanta Learning Center and has been succeeded by Christopher Frye (see photo).

Keith Haynes (see photo) has been named corporate sales director for the Chapman Freeborn Group , Crawley, England.

OBITUARY: Valery Menitsky, a former chief test pilot at Russia’s Mikoyan Design Bureau, died Jan. 15 from cancer. He was 63. Following graduation from the Soviet air force’s Tambov Higher Military Aviation School in 1965, Menitsky completed the defense industry’s test pilot school and graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute. He joined Mikoyan’s flight test group in 1969 where he flew the MiG-21 Fishbed, MiG-23/27 Flogger, MiG-25 Foxbat, MiG-29 Fulcrum and MiG-31 Foxhound.

Boeing revealed that eight orders for 787-8s on its unidentified customer list belong to Spanish carrier Air Europa, which also acquired purchase rights for eight more. They are to be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines.

Canada’s purchase of four C-17 transports—two have entered service—has resulted in $420 million in offset work coming to Canada, says Boeing Vice President Mark Kronenberg. Boeing will match every dollar spent by the Canadian government in acquiring its C-17 fleet by partnering with and issuing contracts to companies in Canada.

The U.S. Navy and Air Force are studying enhanced weapon systems they could field quickly to attack moving targets and ones that are hardened and deeply buried—missions with which the Pentagon continues to struggle. The Navy plans to test its Multiple Effects Warhead next month. The product of a technology demonstration program, MEW is designed to increase the blast overpressure of the ship-launched Toma­hawk cruise missile warhead by 40%, says Capt. Rick McQueen, the Navy’s Tomahawk program director.

ANA will scrap seven unprofitable domestic routes in its coming fiscal year, which begins in April, and reduce frequencies on five other routes.

Sometimes it is all about being in the right place at the right time. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) were available to meet the soaring U.S. and international demand for aerial reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities.

Singapore Airlines plans to use Jeppesen’s electronic flight bag (EFB) software applications on its aircraft as well as Jeppesen paper charts. Singapore will also use Jeppesen’s OpsData services, which provide aircraft performance calculations. The company already provides Singapore Airlines with software for Class 3 EFBs on its Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s, and will do so for Class 1 EFBs on Singapore’s 747s.

Efforts to create a stretched, 130-seat version of the Superjet 100 are moving forward, in part thanks to a memorandum of understanding between Spirit AeroSystems and Russia’s United Aircraft Corp. Spirit would likely participate in the development and manufacture of the carbon-fiber reinforced plastic wing for a stretched version of the 95-seat Sukhoi Superjet 100. A rewinging is seen as essential to grow the aircraft to 130 seats; Aeroflot has evinced an interest in this iteration.

The bomber market has long been dormant, but concerns about the age of the U.S. bomber fleet may result in a small revival. Driven by a mandate to field a new long-range bomber by 2018, the U.S. Air Force appears to have settled on a concept for its next generation of strike aircraft.

Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission and Port Co. and the U.S. Nuclear Security Administration have begun operating radiation detection equipment at the port of Haifa. If a shipping container is flagged by radiation detectors, Israeli-developed technology then identifies the radioisotope involved.

Fixed- and rotary-wing crew numbers continue to be an issue for the British Royal Navy. Figures provided to Parliament last week showed that the Navy is substantially below its target personnel figures in some key areas of naval aviation. In terms of BAE Systems Harrier GR7 instructors, there is a 57% shortfall, while at some ranks the Navy is 51% short of its intended number of Harrier pilots. In the rotary arena, there is a 39% shortfall in AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin pilots, while this figure is 46% for Merlin observers.

Further delays with a troublesome Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (Viirs) sensor will push back the launch of the Npoess Preparatory Project (NPP), the precursor mission for the civil/military weather satellite system. Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says he is “extremely disappointed with the pace of the contractor in analyzing and closing potential quality, workmanship, and testing issues,” pointing the finger directly at Raytheon, manufacturer of the Viirs. NPP was set to launch in 2009.

USAF Col. Christopher F. Burne is one of five colonels who have been nominated for promotion to brigadier general. He is staff judge advocate at Air Combat Command Headquarters, Langley AFB, Va. The others are: Dwight D. Creasy, staff judge advocate at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters, Randolph AFB, Tex.; Mark A. Ediger, command surgeon at Air Education and Training Command Headquarters; Richard A. Hersack, command surgeon at Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; and Daniel O.

Scientists on NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (Messenger) project have started poring through some 500 MB. of data recovered from the spacecraft recorder after its first flyby, including this previously unseen view of the planet’s south pole. The low Sun angle at the day/night terminator gives better terrain-height perspective than was possible with Mariner 10 in 1974-75.

Aerospace consultant Yvonne Brill is one of the three honorary fellows appointed for 2008 by the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The other two are Henry McDonald of the University of Tennessee SimCenter and Abe Zarem, strategic adviser to the knowledge and information technology industries. Damodar Ambur of the NASA Langley Research Center is one of the 30 AIAA fellows for 2008.

Further restructuring is pending for South African aerospace and defense manufacturer Denel, with the likely creation of a merged unmanned aerial vehicle company as well as changes at its missile business unit and munitions and armored vehicles businesses.

Grob is becoming a major partner on Bombardier’s newest business aircraft, the just-named midsize Learjet 85. Grob is bringing its composite expertise to the project, and will develop primary and secondary structures. It also will be a partner on systems integration. The first three Learjet 85 prototypes will be built by Grob Aerospace.

French armaments agency DGA has awarded Eurocopter a 220-million ($321-million) contract to upgrade 27 Cougar helicopters in a move that should help fill a looming rotorcraft capability gap.