European Space Agency engineers are open to collaboration with NASA and other agencies on a Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, but are unsure about rigging the planned ExoMars rover with a sample cache for later return to Earth. “The idea is an excellent one,” says Piero Messina of ESA’s exploration program office in Paris. But “it all depends on what this caching means in terms of mass impact on the mission configuration,” which is not yet clear.
British, French and Swedish partners in a nascent multinational missile program this month will begin determining the impact of Stockholm’s decision to zero-fund its portion of the project. MBDA and Saab Bofors Dynamics are leading the Multi-Role Combat Missile (MRCM) program, which is aimed at developing families of weapons to address a broad range of emerging requirements from their national customers.
Actor Cliff Robertson has been named to receive the 2007 Wesley L. McDonald Elder Statesman of Aviation Award from the National Aeronautic Assn . The award honors Americans who have made contributions of value to aeronautics and is named after NAA’s past chairman, Adm. Wesley L. McDonald. Robertson, a longtime soaring fan, is a member of the Experimental Aircraft Assn. President’s Council and was founding chairman of the EAA Young Eagles Program.
Growing awareness of the threat to Earth posed by even relatively small asteroids is spurring some early work on ways to keep them from hitting Earth. William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at The Aerospace Corp., says the chance of another event the size of the one that leveled a Siberian forest in 1908 with an airburst equal to 10-15 megatons of high explosive is about one in 10 in any given century. That blast, which flattened more than 2,000 sq. km.
Pratt & Whitney has received its first formal production contract for F135 engines for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The low-rate initial order of $69.3 million supports powerplants for the first two conventional takeoff and landing F-35s.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied Raytheon’s protest of the U.S. Army and Air Force’s decision to award the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program to the C-27J team of L-3 Communications, Alenia North America and Boeing. Raytheon was teamed with EADS North America to offer the CASA C-295 for JCA, which will replace the Army’s aging C-23 Sherpa fleet and supplement USAF’s C-130s.
Is a first officer with only 250 hr. total training time ready, and safe, to fly revenue passengers? The issue is one of several in the current industry debate about the Multi-crew Pilot (MPL) License, a program that the International Civil Aviation Organization is aiming to make the global standard for airline pilot training in 2010.
Flushed with the success of its revamped premium economy offering on the Airbus A380, Virgin Atlantic will reconfigure the same class on its fleet of Boeing 747s. The airline will double the number of premium economy seats it offers on the 747 to 64 from 32. Virgin Atlantic’s London Heathrow-based 747s will be equipped with the new premium economy configuration by the end of the year.
Eurocopter is stealing a page from its fixed-wing business aviation colleagues, and has teamed with a renowned design house to tailor its EC135 to the high-end commercial buyer. Discussions between Eurocopter and design firm Hermes go back two years. But rather than focus merely on the look and feel of the rotorcraft, to make a real market impact the two decided the helicopter itself would have to change, says Dominique Orbec, Eurocopter vice president for marketing.
John R. Price comments (AW&ST Sept. 17, p. 10), as have others, that the simple procedure of setting or checking the heading indicator could have prevented the 2006 accident of Comair 5191 at Lexington, Ky. I have flown aircraft and worked in safety for nearly 40 years, and I don’t subscribe to pilot-bashing for accidents. But the crew turned onto an unlit runway, at night, and did not even ask the tower about the lack of lights—even after noting it was “weird.” This is complacency in nearly perfect form.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA have awarded Lockheed Martin a $178-million contract to develop the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) instrument for NOAA’s next generation of geostationary weather satellites, GOES-R. The SUVI will monitor the entire dynamic range of solar X-ray features, including coronal holes and solar flares, and will continue the Solar X-Ray Imager’s mission on the current GOES-N series. The first GOES-R satellite is set to launch in December 2014.
Aerojet is building two flight-test Dual Combustion Ramjet (DCR) engines to power the Boeing-designed, hydrocarbon-fueled HyFly, a hypersonic strike missile demonstrator being developed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Office of Naval Research. Fabrication of the engines follows successful ground tests of the uncooled, high-temperature composite DCR at Aerojet’s Orange, Va., test site. In August 2005, the HyFly’s booster accelerated the vehicle to about Mach 3 to test boost-phase performance.
AT-15e HARV was balloon launched from Wilde Benton airstrip on McGregor Range in New Mexico to demonstrate the capability to cost-effectively deploy and autonomously recover a high-altitude payload from more than 60,000 ft. The airframe was equipped with an electric motor, a Cloud Cap Piccolo II autopilot, an SSR transponder and UHF and satellite communications. The payload weight was 10 lb. Available payload capacity is 20 lb. Ascent time was 52 min., with balloon float occurring at 63,684 ft., about 13 mi. downrange. The T-15 was released 2 min. later.
The European Commission is hoping proposed changes in running and funding the Galileo and Egnos satellite navigation systems will lead to a quick resolution of problems threatening their future. The revamp proposal was submitted last week to the European Parliament and the European Council, which in June agreed to abandon the public-private partnership arrangement that had been set up to manage and fund deployment of the 30-satellite system (AW&ST June 18, p. 44).
Even though the FAA has published scores of Required Navigation Performance procedures, only a limited number of aircraft operators in the U.S. are qualified to use them. Alaska Airlines still dominates all activity in the U.S., and this is mostly in its home state. JetBlue Airways employs RNP at New York JFK International Airport in visual conditions, while Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines have gained FAA approval for their RNP operations.
Dorothy White (see photo) has been named St. Louis-based regional sales director for charter support services and aircraft management for Jet Aviation. She was regional vice president-sales for The Air Group and is president of the Greater St. Louis Business Aviation Assn.
The aerospace industry may have a fastener shortage, but there’s no lack of wingnuts in your Correspondence section. Continuing to find this half-baked theorizing in a reputable publication is disturbing. Will we next have an AW&ST editorial after the lines of The New York Times assault on Goddard, in which that newspaper ridiculed the idea of rocket flight into vacuum?
Boeing’s Sea-Based X-Band Radar is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, preparing for its next flight test as part of meeting the goal of putting the radar into the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
Shanghai Airlines has denied rumors that it will be taken over by Air China and China Eastern, the country’s second- and third-largest airlines. The Shanghai-based airline is one of the largest Chinese carriers independent of the country’s big-three. Rumors of airline mergers have been common this year, even though the authorities seem to show little enthusiasm for the idea.
Bremen, Germany-based OHB Technology has acquired a 19% stake in SpaceDev, a Poway, Calif., manufacturer of space components and systems with annual sales of $30 million. The deal, for $4.4 million in stock, will allow the two companies to increase product penetration in European and U.S. markets.
Chinese aircraft maker Avic I has agreed with China Eastern Airlines to set up a regional carrier to operate its aircraft. The initial fleet will be at least 10 MA60 turboprops, but with a long-term aim of operating 100 regional aircraft. The focus of operations, to begin in the first half of next year, will be on western China.
Aviation is vital to the world’s economic growth and development. But as we all recognize, its very success has produced a new set of challenges. How the international community will address one of these issues—aviation’s contribution to climate change—is likely to be one of the defining issues at the triennial Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) this week in Montreal.
With as many as 7,600 very light jets forecast to be flying in U.S. skies by 2025, a key operational question will be whether an air traffic system transitioning to satellite-based navigation will be able to absorb all of them. The Government Accountability Office recently summarized nine VLJ outlooks, ranging from the Teal Group’s low of 3,000 aircraft by 2016 to Rolls-Royce’s high of 7,600 by 2025. The air taxi business will play a role, alongside owner-flown aircraft, in any additional load on the U.S. air traffic system.
