Hundreds of images from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have gone into a new simulated flyover of the planet's huge Valles Marineris canyon produced by JPL and Arizona State University. Infrared daytime views from ASU's Thermal Emission Imaging System multi-band camera on Odyssey, which show features as small as 1,000 ft. across, were combined in the moving mosaic, along with false coloring to simulate a human-eye view. A computerized topographic model for Valles Marineris, which has walls as tall as Mt.
British defense research company Qinetiq is planning further flight trials of its Zephyr long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle in 2007, following successful flight-testing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., last December.
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The addition of a second spacecraft to the privately financed Spainsat/XTAR-EUR military satellite communications program will provide Spain and its NATO allies with global, secure X-band capacity for out-of-theater and other critical communications tasks.
Peter Diamandis, chairman/CEO of the X Prize Foundation, has been named to receive an honorary 2006 Lindbergh Award. Diamandis, a pioneer in the development of incentive prizes, will be recognized for his ability "to inspire the brightest minds on Earth to tackle some of the most pressing issues in the world today, including changes in modes of space travel." In 2004, Scaled Composites won the X Prize for its design of SpaceShipOne.
Leaders of United Aerospace Workers Local 1069 at Boeing Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia recommended a "yes" vote on Mar. 18 by 1,300 Boeing workers on a four-year contract that calls for a 10% increase in wages, cost-of-living adjustments and other premiums, plus lump-sum payments.
Alcatel Alenia Space will provide a synthetic aperture radar payload for Kompsat-5, a new X-band imaging satellite to be developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Alcatel also will supply a data link and ground image processor, along with calibration algorithms and equipment. Intended for geoinformation and disaster management applications, Kompsat-5 is to be launched in late 2008.
Comair flight attendants are voting whether to grant authority to the Teamsters Union to strike the carrier if a bankruptcy judge voids their contract with the Delta Air Lines subsidiary carrier. The ballots will be counted Mar. 24. A hearing on the contract before Judge Adlai S. Hardin, Jr., of U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is scheduled Mar. 27-29. The judge has until Apr. 10 to decide, but could extend the deadline.
International Space Station Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev was scheduled to undock the Soyuz vehicle that brought him and ISS Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and move it to a new port this week, clearing the way for the next station crew to arrive Mar. 31. Tokarev will shift the Soyuz from the nadir docking port on the Zarya module to the aft docking port on the Zvezda service module in a 35-min. flight that was scheduled to begin at 1 a.m. EST Mar. 20. For safety's sake, McArthur will go along for the ride.
Air France says a new satellite terminal, S3, intended for the Airbus A380 will not be ready until June 2007. It was originally scheduled for April. The new terminal will be necessary to help reduce the number of flights being handled from remote parking slots. This percentage now exceeds 50%, compared to just 20% at Heathrow and none in Frankfurt, according to Chairman/CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta.
The first U.K.-modified Sentinel R MKI aircraft for the British Royal Air Force has been flown to Greenville, Tex., where it will take part in the flight test program.
Alliant Techsystems is getting a new chief financial officer as it repositions its operations under three business groups. The weapons and space systems contractor says Eric Rangen, who had been CFO for five years, will be replaced by John Shroyer, ATK's vice president of operations since last year. Rangen's departure coincides with ATK's plans to reorganize on Apr. 1 into three divisions: Mission, Launch and Ammunition Systems.
The last sentence of the letter from Lee Gaillard about the Airbus A380 wing test --"It will be interesting to see how the European Aviation Safety Agency and FAA handle certification"--is very significant (AW&ST Mar. 6, p. 6).
British Airways aims to cut costs by a further 450 million pounds ($783 million) as its rolling program of restructuring continues with its latest business plan covering 2006-08. The cost-cutting target is again raising concern over a further round of job losses. The airline is also beginning to consider future fleet plans, with options on 10 Boeing 777-200ERs set for delivery in 2009-10. The aim of the latest plan is to allow BA to hit its target of a 10% operating margin, currently at 8%.
LOT Polish Airlines expects to become the first European airline fielding the Embraer 175 regional jet. The carrier is taking four aircraft of the type. After the April delivery, another model should arrive in May and the rest by midsummer.
Kenneth Boudreau, who is president/ CEO of the M.C. Gill Corp., El Monte, Calif., has been appointed to the board of directors of Pacific Premier Bancorp.
MBDA plans to close down some sites and reorganize operations in the face of a slowdown in domestic business and a stiff export challenge from emerging players. One thrust of the five-year undertaking, according to CEO Marwan Lahoud, will be paring MBDA's 10,650-strong workforce by 10%, and reducing the number of major facilities--most likely to 10, from 16 today. A second objective will be to improve the organization of program management, engineering and production activities, particularly in Italy, and integrate them across European national boundaries.
Robert Meyer and Eric Ovlen have been appointed group vice presidents for sales and marketing and for human resources, respectively, at Meggitt Aerospace Equipment, Simi Valley, Calif. Meyer was president/general manager of the Endevco unit of the Meggitt Electronics Div. Ovlen was the division's vice president-organizational effectiveness.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Douglas Barrie (London), Andy Nativi (Genoa)
Anglo-American feuding over the Joint Strike Fighter threatens to spill over into the wider transatlantic relationship. On the domestic front, there is bad blood between Congress and the Pentagon over the fate of the aircraft's alternative engine. Britain is leading the assault on Washington over the contentious issue of technology access on the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), with other program partners, such as Australia, in support.
Accident investigators examining the crash of a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 north of Athens last summer are in the final stages of writing the draft report and hope to issue the final version in early summer. The investigation is already yielding suggestions on how to improve monitoring of flight deck activity.
Apparently sensing a window of opportunity, Thales is earmarking more than $1 billion for acquisitions in a bid to grow its business by 25% over the next three years.
The European Space Agency Smart-1 lunar orbiter continues to acquire innovative science data as the U.S. is beginning a major restoration of Apollo-era lunar data to prepare for the new Exploration Initiative. As the U.S., India, China and Japan all prepare to launch new lunar orbiter missions over the next two years, often overlooked is Europe's lunar orbiter which is already at the Moon where it has been acquiring science data since mid-2005.
In a dramatic bid to maximize the utilization of existing, low-cost planetary spacecraft, researchers want to divert the NASA/Lockheed Martin Stardust comet-sample-return mothership to intercept and image a second comet that was blasted open last July 4 by the Deep Impact mission. Stardust is about 20 million mi. behind the Earth in a solar orbit that earlier enabled it to collect samples from the comet Wild 2 (AW&ST Jan. 12, 2004, p. 29).
