John Elbon has been named vice president and program manager for Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration's Constellation. He succeeds Chuck Allen, who is now vice president-Boeing business operations at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. Elbon was International Space Station vice president and program manager. He has been succeeded by Joy Bryant, who was Space Exploration chief engineer. Bryant, in turn, has been succeeded by Joe Gernand, who was deputy program manager and chief engineer.
Alvin S. White, the North American Aviation test pilot who made the first flight of USAF XB-70, died Apr. 28 in Tucson, Ariz., after a brief illness. He was 87.
Lufthansa Technik is integrating the supply of components, spare parts and consumables for airline networks through central component and supplies depots. The aim is to "go beyond the shipping address" to put Lufthansa personnel on site "working side-by-side" with airline maintenance staff to improve the dispatch reliability of their aircraft, said Senior Vice President Uwe Mukrasch during Aviation Week's MRO conference here last month.
Mark T. Esper has been appointed executive vice president-defense and international affairs for the Arlington, Va.-based Aerospace Industries Assn. He was director of national security affairs for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Two NASA astronauts and a cosmonaut making his second long-term visit will make up the 14th expedition to the International Space Station, beginning in the fall. Michael Lopez-Alegria, who has visited the station on two of his three space shuttle missions, will join Expedition 3 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin for a September Soyuz flight to the ISS. Lopez-Alegria will command Expedition 14, and Tyurin will again be flight engineer. They will be joined by NASA's Sunita Williams, a first-time astronaut, when she reaches the station on shuttle mission STS-116.
For long-range spying, Northrop Grumman is developing a new S-band active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar intended for installation on a next-generation ship that will specialize in watching foreign missile launches and other weapons testing. Cobra Judy ships have carried out that surveillance and ballistic-missile, data-collection mission for decades, but they will soon give way to a replacement ship.
Singapore Airlines expects to start thrice-weekly service to Milan and Barcelona July 19 with Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, increasing its weekly flights to Europe to 81. SIA's executive vice president for marketing and regions, Huang Cheng Eng, says the two cities' large business and leisure markets will heighten SIA's presence in the Mediterranean.
USMC Cols. Jon M. Davis and Robert S. Walsh have been nominated for promotion to brigadier general. Davis is commanding officer of Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Sqdn. 1, Yuma, Ariz. Walsh is commanding officer of Marine Aircraft Group 31, Beaufort, N.C.
Eutelsat has selected EADS Astrium to build Hot Bird 9, a 64-transponder K u-band satellite to be launched in 2008 to its big 13 deg. E. video neighborhood. It was the third satcom win for Astrium this year.
L-3 Communications Wescam received an order from Keystone Helicopter to provide four MX-15i electro-optical and infrared systems for installation on Sikorsky S-92 search-and-rescue aircraft. The aircraft will be provided to Canadian Helicopter Corp. for deployment to the U.K. to support maritime operations there.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is off to India this week to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Space Research Organization covering U.S. plans to mount two instruments on India's upcoming Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter. Griffin will tour ISRO space facilities in Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram and on Sriharikota Island, which should get him in shape for his trip to China this fall. NASA, through the State Dept., is still working out details of the visit, including the exact dates.
The German government plans to hike spending for space as part of a reinforced support strategy for research and development that should also benefit aeronautics.
Trials of a key element of the ground segment of the U.K.'s Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor) intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance program are underway. Tests of the system's Tactical Ground Stations are being carried out in parallel to those now ongoing on the first two of the Royal Air Force's five Sentinel R Mk.1 aircraft. Mobility tests of the ground stations mounted on the Pinzgauer Steyr vehicle (see photo) have been carried out at the Millbrook proving ground in the south of England.
Cessna has sold 11 aircraft to customers in the Middle East. Wallan Aviation, Cessna's Middle East distributor, signed up for four Citation Sovereigns, two Citation XLSs and one Citation CJ3, for delivery in 2007. Gulf Jet of Dubai ordered a Sovereign, along with three XLSs. Cessna also revealed a 136-kg. (300-lb.) payload increase for the Sovereign.
Rolls-Royce has begun the fast-paced test program for its latest commercial aircraft turbofan, the Trent 1000, which is to power the Boeing 787. The high-bypass engine features new-design, wide-chord swept fan blades to help meet noise and efficiency targets. But Rolls and other European engine makers know they need to do more to keep pace with increasingly stringent requirements for quieter powerplants that also bring reductions in air pollutants (see p. 48). Rolls-Royce photo.
Robert L. Crippen, who joined John Young on the flight deck of the first space shuttle mission, received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at an Apr. 26 ceremony commemorating the shuttle program's 25th anniversary. Authorized by Congress in 1969 as the highest U.S. award for spaceflight, the Space Medal of Honor has gone to 28 astronauts, including Young--commander of the STS-1 mission--Neil Armstrong, John Glenn and the lost crews of Apollo 1 and the shuttles Challenger and Columbia.
Two NASA individuals who were key to the shuttle return-to-flight effort are retiring from the agency, although one of them--the director of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC)--will stay on through at least the next shuttle mission and possibly beyond that. KSC Director James Kennedy will retire in January 2007 after 35 years of government service, 31 of them with NASA. Kennedy has overseen nearly 15,000 NASA and contractor employees at the shuttle launch site involved in returning the fleet to flight.
Boeing expects to select an overhauler to rebuild passenger 767-300s into freighters by early summer as it moves toward a first delivery to All Nippon Airways in fourth-quarter 2007. Marco Cavazzoni, director of the 747-400 Boeing Converted Freighter (BCF) program, says a preliminary agreement has been signed for the 767 program with a single overhaul center that specializes in passenger-to-freighter conversions.
Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany will provide strong support for research during its rotation at the European Union presidency next year. Lukewarm support by some states during the U.K. presidency last year threatened to rein in the EU's space ambitions, which include helping bankroll the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security network. Although the R&D budget has yet to be determined, ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain says the assumption is still that EC space research funding will be about 200 million euros ($252 million) per year.
Ron Kato (see photo) has become vice president-customer satisfaction for the Aerospace Group of Crane Aerospace & Electronics, Lynnwood, Wash. He was vice president-customers and solutions.
Boeing, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins are now officially part of the mostly European team that's developing an air traffic management (ATM) master plan for Europe.
Jeffrey N. Shane, U.S. undersecretary of Transportation for Policy, has won Aviation Week & Space Technology's annual L. Welch Pogue Award. Shane was cited for advocacy of open skies for nearly 15 years. The award, which was initiated in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Convention, led to establishment of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Pogue was U.S. representative to the convention and a chairman of the former Civil Aeronautics Board. In presenting the honor at Aviation Week's MRO awards dinner in Phoenix on Apr.
New digital passports issued by France comply with U.S. technical requirements for countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program, the Homeland Security Dept. says. Travelers carrying French e-passports, which also comply with digital photo requirements, will immediately be entitled to enter the U.S. without visas.
NASA has put as much of the space shuttle as possible into the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) it is developing as a replacement, looking to hold down development costs and smooth the transition from the old to the new. Still, moving crews from the shuttle to the CLV and the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that will ride atop it will not be a simple plug-and-play reconfiguration. Despite some surface similarities, the CLV will be almost as different on the inside from the shuttle as the CEV will be from the Apollo command module that has given it its basic shape.
Nearly 23 hr. long, the 11,664-naut.- mi. nonstop flight of a Boeing 777-200LR last November that went the "wrong way" from Hong Kong to London has been honored by the National Aeronautics Assn. as a world record.
