NASA will wind up 2007 with the entire vehicle under contract to provide the next U.S. route to space for humans under contract, after tapping Boeing to build the Instrument Unit Avionics (IUA) for the Ares I crew launch vehicle. Worth as much as $779.5 million through 2016, the IUA award means there are now contractors for the entire Ares I/Orion crew exploration vehicle, which is headed toward preliminary design review by the end of next year.
John Roddy has been named Tempe, Ariz.-based executive vice president ground operations and product development for Iridium Satellite . He was president of Telcordia Global Services of New Jersey.
Boeing has started production of the P-8A Poseidon fuselage. The 737-derivative aircraft will replace the long-serving U.S. Navy P-3 Orion. In early 2008, the first fuselage will begin aircraft assembly. Five aircraft will be built for the program’s development and demonstration phase. The first test aircraft will be delivered to the Navy in 2009.
Messier-Dowty has been named the main landing gear supplier for the Airbus A350XWB, with first items to be delivered to Airbus in early 2011. Airbus has set a four-wheel main landing gear requirement for the -800 and -900s, but the larger and heavier A350-1000 will have six to reduce wheel loading. The landing gear also will sport a four-wheel bogie and dual side stay, which reduces loading on the aircraft’s composite wing. Safran unit Messier-Dowty notes that the gear will use advanced materials, specifically titanium, to decrease weight and limit corrosion.
CIT Aerospace has signed contracts with Ryanair to acquire and lease up to 15 Boeing 737-800s. The jets, similar to those operated by carriers such as EgyptAir, will be equipped with CFM-56-7B24 engines and winglets. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2008 and end in 2009. In addition, the company has another 10 737s on order for delivery in 2010-11. CIT owns or finances a fleet of more than 300 aircraft including 41 next-generation 737s.
Volvo Aero is buying Sweden’s Applied Composites as part of the engine maker’s expanding strategy to focus on technologies to create lighter powerplants. The 70-employee company, with a projected 2007 turnover of 110 million Swedish kronor ($17 million), is supposed to help Volvo Aero transition from metal parts to composites. Volvo Aero says that in the next 18 months it plans to spend $8 million on composite research and development. Volvo Aero will also establish a business unit focused on developing and building composite engine parts.
Prodded by Congress, the U.S. Homeland Security Dept. is going to test laser jammer technology next year as a defense system against terrorist missile attacks on commercial airline flights. The department has awarded BAE Systems and team member American Airlines a $29-million contract to test the infrared countermeasures system known as JetEye on scheduled American transcontinental flights.
Roel Berendsen (see photo) has become Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based vice president of ESR Technology ’s Aviation Div. in the Middle East. He has been head of the U.K.-based ESR’s Aviation Business Development Unit.
Civil Air Patrol Col. Mary Feik of the Annapolis (Md.) Composite Sqdn. has received the National Aeronautic Assn. ’s 2006 Frank Brewer Trophy as well as the Switzerland-based Federation Aeronautique International ’s 2006 Tissandier Diploma. The trophy recognizes contributions to aerospace education. Feik was cited for more than 65 years of work in aerospace education as a teacher, mentor, pilot and engineer. The diploma honors service to aviation. Feik was recognized for her work as an engineer, test poilot and innovator in aircraft repair.
Extensive evidence of wind, clouds, lightning and other climatic processes sent back by Europe’s Venus Express probe is sparking new interest in the nearest planet to Earth.
France is introducing a system to promote and control arms exports that it hopes will put a spark into sales particularly at a time when the weak dollar is hurting the euro-based industry’s price competitiveness with U.S. rivals.
Alitalia’s board put off naming a preferred buyer until this week, but that hasn’t stopped efforts to find a new owner from becoming more bizarre. After a deadline had passed for non-binding offers, Alitalia reported that late interest appears to have been expressed by a group of investors, including Singapore Airlines, to take a 49.9% stake, although acknowledging that SIA had waved off interest. Singapore Airlines, for its part, stressed reports it was interested in Alitalia were incorrect.
Piotr Wolak has been appointed vice president-customer service and Michele A. Fite vice president-human resources for the Mooney Airplane Co. , Kerrville, Tex. Wolak held the same position at Pilatus Business Aircraft, Broomfield, Colo. He succeeds Al Nitchman, who has retired. Fite was director of staffing and employee relations at Kinetic Concepts Inc. in San Antonio.
NASA’s Discovery Program will fund the launch in 2011 of a pair of gravity probes to measure the structure of the Moon from lunar orbit. Like the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) spacecraft orbiting Earth, the two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (Grail) orbiters will monitor variations in the gravity field below by measuring the distance between them with great precision.
Airbus plans to offer a liquid crystal display HUD on all of its in-production aircraft types. The head-up display was recently certified on the A318 and A318 Elite corporate jet, and will be offered on the A320 family as well as on all A330/A340 and A380 models. The A380 can be equipped with single or dual systems; the other models, with a single HUD. The company says the new HUD also has a wide enough field of view, plus video display capability, to accommodate enhanced and synthetic vision systems (EVS/SVS).
Christopher Holmes has been appointed president/CEO of Atlantic Inertial Systems , Cheshire, Conn. He was vice president/general manager of the Goodrich Corp.’s Electro-Optical Systems and Space Flight Systems units.
Bryant McLarty has been appointed as a non-executive director on the board of London-based Aviation plc . He is executive director of Pharmaust Ltd. Richard Sinclair has been named CEO/finance director of subsidiary Capital Lease Aviation plc and has resigned as a director of Aviation plc.
Robert Wall (Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israel), David A. Fulghum (Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israel)
Israel’s military prowess has long rested on dominating the radio-frequency spectrum, and now researchers are pressing to expand that level of information acumen into new domains. Laser technology and measurement and signature intelligence (Masint) are the latest areas where Israeli’s defense industry can give the military an edge. The work draws on a mix of newly developed hardware and software tools that allow for better exploitation of information, particularly in the electro-optical world.
Astrobotic Technology of Redmond, Wash., says it will be an entrant in the Google Lunar X Prize competition to put a robotic rover on the Moon. It has tapped Raytheon to design advanced lunar landing technologies. Raytheon might also be selected for engineering management, the lander design and high-bandwidth telecommunications.
A secret U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) relay spacecraft is completing checkout in a highly elliptical orbit following launch on a northern trajectory Dec. 10 from Cape Canaveral on a U.S. Air Force Atlas V. The mission involved special prelaunch coordination with Canada and the U.K. If a malfunction had occurred during powered flight, rocket and satellite debris could have landed near or on Canadian or British territory.
Italy’s first enhanced cockpit procedure trainer for the Eurofighter Typhoon will go live by the end of December. The simulator is at the 4th Fighter Wing at Grosseto air base in Tuscany. Alenia Aeronautica delivered the simulator Dec. 6. A second simulator will be installed at the Typhoon base at Gioia del Colle in southern Italy.
Dusty solar panels on NASA’s Spirit Mars Exploration Rover blend in with the background in this mosaic self-portrait taken with the vehicle’s mast-mounted panoramic camera. The dust diminishes the panels’ ability to generate electricity, limiting Spirit to an hour of driving per two days of power output. Controllers are using that capability to move the rover to a sun-facing 25-deg. slope on the “Home Plate” plateau for a better chance of survival through the approaching Martian winter.
Arianespace will launch the Amazonas-2 communications satellite for Spanish operator Hispasat in the summer of 2009 from its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, under a contract signed Dec. 13 by Hispasat Chairman and CEO Petra Mateos and Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall. Based on Astrium’s Eurostar E3000 spacecraft bus, Amazonas-2 will weigh 5,400 kg. (11,900 lb.) at launch and feature 54 Ku-band and 10 C-band transponders. From its geostationary orbital position at 61 deg. W.
Owners and operators of very light jets such as the Cessna Citation Mustang, Eclipse 500 and other airplanes can now access VLJ Magazine, a free web-based publication dedicated to news about VLJs only. For more information go to www.VLJmag.com.
