ProtoStar, a Bermuda-based startup planning to offer direct-to-home broadcasting coverage across Asia, says it has completed financing needed to acquire and launch the first of three spacecraft to provide the service. The $210-million financing package, consisting of $160 million in senior secured convertible notes and $50 million in equity from venture capital and private-equity funds, will complement initial funding raised in 2005 from New Enterprise Associates and SpaceVest.
Eurocopter has opened a regional maintenance center in Malaysia and announced a plan to build an additional hangar early next year. The center comprises two facilities in western Malaysia and two in the eastern half of the country.
Qantas has become a rare airline target for a leveraged buyout, raising a risk for its rivals that the Australian carrier will emerge in a few years as a stronger and fitter competitor.
The European Space Agency says the control center built to operate Europe's Columbus orbital laboratory is now operational. The center, located at a DLR facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, is initially earmarked for ESA science missions on the Inter- national Space Station such as Astrolab, which is underway. When Columbus is launched to the ISS toward the end of next year, the center will assume control of that lab as well.
Analysts worry that WorldSpace may be running out of time in its effort to market digital audio radio in India. Indian retail radio sales were down 70-85% in October and 40-75% in November from a year ago, according to Bear, Stearns. Retailers have complained of weak communications links with WorldSpace, inconsistent inventory and receiver headaches. Although stores hope for a sales pickup in December, they still expect sales to remain well below 2005 levels.
The U.S. Air Force is revealing one part of a complex series of programs that obtained, tested and analyzed foreign military equipment on the Nevada test ranges northwest of Las Vegas and Nellis AFB. Air Force officials acknowledge that U.S. pilots flew Soviet-designed aircraft (although some were built in China and elsewhere) from an air base on the Tonopah Test Range, the northwest part of the larger Nevada test ranges. When the F-117 was still classified, it also flew from the Tonopah base, which is still home to various foreign aircraft.
Embraer has issued its 2008 aircraft delivery target, saying it will beat the 160-165-aircraft output plan for next year by producing 195-205 jets the year after. That production level includes 15-20 Phenom 100 very light jets in the first year those aircraft are being built. Eventually, production for the Phenom 100 and its light jet cousin, the Phenom 300, is expected to reach 120-150 aircraft per year.
Europe, the U.S. and China are teaming with the World Meteorological Organization to set up a global broadcasting system intended to make weather, climate and environmental data readily available at little cost to users worldwide. The system, known as GeonetCast, will be unveiled at a meeting of the Group on Earth Observations in Bonn on Nov. 28. It will be one of the first tangible links in the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (Geoss).
Europe's Ulysses spacecraft is once again passing over the Sun's south polar area as it continues tracking sunspots and other cyclical solar activity. Previous solar probes stayed near the plane of the Sun's equator, the European Space Agency says. From its highly inclined orbit, Ulysses has twice before orbited over the Sun's polar areas, first during a lull in sunspot activity and then during a period of frequent sunspots. This third pass is during a sunspot minimum, after a reversal in the Sun's magnetic poles.
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Pentagon brass testifying next year before the Senate Armed Services Committee will answer questions from three potential presidential candidates. John McCain (Ariz.) has all but announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination in 2008, and as ranking minority member he will have a bully pulpit. Incoming Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says he hopes McCain will keep pushing for military acquisition reform. Despite her front-runner status in Democratic opinion polls, Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) remains mum about her presidential plans. But her lecture to U.S.
General Electric and Rolls-Royce have completed a preliminary design review of the F136 engine they are jointly developing as the alternative powerplant to Pratt & Whitney's F135 for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. Critical design review is expected to be completed in late 2007. The first F136 for the system development and demonstration phase is expected to be tested in mid-2008.
Kenneth McNamara has become vice president-customer and product support for Eclipse Aviation, Albuquerque, N.M. He was chief operating officer of Skyplus Technologies.
Prof. John H. Marsh, who is cofounder/chief technical officer of Intense Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland, has been appointed president-elect of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Lasers and Electro-Optics Society for 2007. In 2008, he is expected to become president, succeeding Prof. Alan Willner of the University of Southern California.
SES Global has split awards for two new spacecraft, contracting NSS-9, intended for its New Skies affiliate, to Orbital Sciences Corp. and Astra 3b to EADS Astrium. NSS-9, a 2.2-metric-ton, 2.3-kw. spacecraft with 28 active C-band transponders, will be launched to 183 deg. E. Long. in 2008, permitting NSS-5 to be moved to an as-yet undisclosed orbital slot. The satellite will have three flexible beams serving the Western and Eastern Hemispheres and the entire visible planet, in line with New Skies' role as SES's third pillar, alongside Astra and Americom.
Two days after Pakistan tested its Hatf V missile, India test fired its surface-to-surface Prithvi-II ballistic missile, with a 250-km. range. More tests are likely to be conducted in the next weeks. The latest trial checked new software designed to increase accuracy. The test comes four months after intermediate ballistic missile Agni-III's failed firing.
Air Cruisers, Honeywell Aerospace and Thales have joined six other equipment suppliers in Boeing's GoldCare life-cycle support system for the 787. Air Cruisers, a part of the Zodiac Group, will provide the jet's evacuation system; Honeywell, the navigation package, Crew Information System/Management System, flight control electronics and external lighting; and Thales, the flight controls, inflight entertainment, navigation and power conversion systems.
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), with a powerful camera, thermal emission spectrometer and laser altimeter, was to be used for continuing science operations even though the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has much greater resolution and spectral capability. Science areas that would especially feel the loss of MGS include: *Weather and climate monitoring: MGS has collected about five Martian years of weather and climate data that researchers wished to overlap with MRO monitoring.
AW&ST Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief William B. Scott waits to board the Scaled Composites White Knight while Scaled crew chief Rick Aldrich (kneeling) helps Douglas B. Shane, test pilot and director of flight operations, strap into the aircraft. During a 1.4-hr. mission from the Mojave (Calif.) Airport, Shane flew the former SpaceShipOne carrier/launch aircraft to 25,000 ft. and 40,000 ft., where Scott acquired baseline test data on a FlexSys wing section (see p. 70).
Boeing has announced completion of a mission system production upgrade for the first NATO E-3 AWACS aircraft as part of the $1.35-billion Mid-Term Modernization Program. All 17 of NATO's AWACS aircraft and two simulators, based in Geilenkirchen, Ger- many, are to be upgraded by the end of 2008. The upgrades are designed to integrate data from aircraft sensors and off-board sources. Workstations also have been upgraded, as has the communications equipment. Two NATO mission simulators are being upgraded, too, to reflect the new standard.
Airbus's partners in a planned Chinese assembly line have raised only $38 million to invest in it, the first financial details from Chinese state media suggest. That figure will be the capital of the Chinese consortium expected to hold a 49% stake in the plant, which is to assemble A319s and A320s beginning in 2009, predominantly for the Chinese market. Airbus is to hold the other 51%. Government-linked Tianjin Free Trade Zone Investment Co.
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Czech government and industry officials are trying to downplay concerns that the acquisition of Czech aerospace contractor Aero Vodochody by Oakfield, an affiliate of private equity firm Penta, may bring the troubled L-159 trainer/light attack aircraft program to a halt.
