Alain Bensoussan, president of the CNES French space agency, has received the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal for his contribution to U.S.-French space cooperation.
Major U.S. airlines, approaching the end of their worst-ever year, are leaving no stone unturned--except, perhaps, for federal loan guarantees--in their search for cash to ride out a storm of uncertain duration. Passenger airlines' combined net losses in the third quarter of 2001, $2.4 billion, were greater than full-year losses in all but two previous years, even though the carriers received about $2.1 billion in federal grants. The fourth quarter is widely expected to be worse, sending losses for 2001 past $7 billion.
Honeywell has been selected to supply its EASy Flight Deck avionics, auxiliary power unit, air management systems and with Parker Aerospace, the hydraulic power generation system for Dassault's Falcon 7X business jet. Honeywell will supply flight controls, a military version of the traffic alert and collision avoidance system, and inertial navigation and air data computers for the engineering and development phase of the Lockheed Martin C-130 avionics modernization program. The two contracts are valued at a total of $1.02 billion.
The next advance in training for strike and fighter pilots will be a combined flight simulator and centrifuge, adding the feel of realistic high g-forces to the cues from a wide-field-of-view visual system, as the pilot maneuvers his aircraft.
Among the issues NASA Administrator-designate Sean O'Keefe will face once he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate is a shortfall of about $500 million in expected savings under the $3.4-billion Consolidated Space Operations Contract, which manages data collection, telemetry and communications across the agency. The CSOC problem adds to the red ink already flowing in the agency's human spaceflight and infrastructure accounts.
The passenger who ran past a security checkpoint at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport earlier this month and disappeared in the terminal will not face federal charges even though the incident caused the airport to be shut down for four hours. As many as 10,000 passengers and employees were evacuated and scores of flights were canceled. Michael Lasseter, a 32-year-old financial executive, was later identified from security camera video and apprehended in the airport as he attempted to buy another ticket. He said he had just been trying to retrieve his camera bag.
Joe Schreiner has been promoted to vice president-third party technical services for AAR Aircraft and Engine Sales and Leasing, Wood Dale, Ill., from director of technical operations.
While the military component of homeland defense is still up in the air, the White House has no shortage of options (see p. 58). Due early next year is the biennial review of the Unified Command Plan--the master document that governs how the Pentagon apportions global responsibilities--so senior Defense Dept. civilians are busy finding various ways to fit the new U.S. theater of conflict into the mix. Rather than establishing a new military fiefdom, they would rather shoehorn the requirement into an existing command.
After the longest inquiry in British planning history, Whitehall has given the go-ahead to Heathrow's Terminal 5, but with strict conditions intended to mediate the fierce political conflict between economic growth and environmental protection that has tied the proposal in knots since it was submitted in 1993.
The Globalstar satellite network could potentially support aviation security applications, including real-time video and audio monitoring of aircraft cabins and cockpits.
Russian investigators are trying to determine why a 40-year-old Ilyushin Il-18 crashed about 125 mi. southwest of Moscow on Nov. 19, killing all nine crew and 18 passengers on board. The Il-18, operated by Moscow-based IRS-Aero, a charter airline, took off from Khatanga airport in northern Siberia at 4:06 p.m. Moscow time. At 9:24 p.m., while at FL250 (25,000 ft.), it vanished from air traffic control radar without emergency radio calls from the crew. A rescue team has found the aircraft's wreckage over an area of about 1.5 mi. that could indicate an inflight breakup.
There are many aerospace-related outcomes from the events of Sept. 11. At least two affect pilots in disparate ways. Air transportation is in a relative free-fall, resulting in 5,692 pilots placed on furlough. That's slightly more than 6% of the total 94,571 active airline pilots, the most pilots on furlough since the early 1990s. At the same time, Air National Guard (ANG) fighter pilots are seeing flight time escalate from the typical eight training sorties per month to as many hours as they can handle flying airspace-protection missions.
Europe's Artemis technology demonstration satellite and Spot 4 imaging spacecraft have successfully established an optical intersatellite link, the first time optical data transmission has been used between civil satellites. The transmission demonstrated the capability of Artemis' Silex data relay system, developed by the European Space Agency, French space agency CNES and Astrium, despite a launch incident in July that left the satellite stranded in the wrong orbit.
The European Space Agency's Rosetta comet probe is set to begin environmental testing. Rosetta, due to be launched in January 2003 to the comet 46P/Wirtanen, completed integration at the Alenia Spazio assembly facility in Turin earlier this month. Alenia is responsible for assembly, integration and testing of the 3-metric-ton (6,600-lb.) spacecraft, under subcontract to Astrium.
Northrop Grumman has logged the first flight of a prototype EA-6B upgraded with the ICAP-III electronic warfare suite. With the Prowler scheduled to serve through 2015, an enhanced electronic attack capability was required to better jam higher and lower frequency radar and communications. The new system is better able to focus jamming power. It also has the ability to follow the abrupt changes employed by frequency hopping radars, and is to be operational by 2005.
Japan's major aerospace manufacturers expect a 20-30% decline in manufacturing revenues beginning next year as an aftershock from the U.S. terrorism attacks. The cutback in orders from Boeing is the largest contributing factor. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan's largest aerospace manufacturer, is forecasting a 10-billion-yen ($83-million) decline in the value of its aerospace orders through the end of fiscal 2001 next March, as is Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has won a key parliamentary victory that will allow the country to take an active military role in international conflicts outside of Europe for the first time since World War II.
Whitehall has no equivalent to Washington's homeland security program, but Sept. 11 convinced the U.K. that the defense of aviation against terrorism must be globalized as never before, so that domestic and international air security are a seamless whole.
Government agencies responsible for fighting terrorism on U.S. soil and abroad have turned to the national laboratories in search of new technologies for their arsenals. However, none of those agencies appears to have embraced a broad systems approach that could solve critical homeland security problems.
This orthorectified radar image of Washington Dulles International Airport is an example of how the company's imagery can be used to identify major features of interest to homeland security planning, such as runways, roads, structures, water bodies and other infrastructure. Such imagery gives agencies involved in homeland security a database of all major public and private infrastructure that is susceptible to terrorist action. The company is preparing to re-map the continental U.S.
ESA is also getting ready to begin integrating the first structural and thermal model of the Automated Transfer Vehicle, a spacecraft intended to ferry supplies to the International Space Station and to periodically reboost the facility to higher orbit. The service module for the ATV was delivered at Astrium's Bremen, Germany, facility on Nov. 12. After mating with the cargo module, handed over by Alenia in July, the test model will undergo 11 months of acoustic, thermal and vibration tests.
The third Paris international airport, tentatively scheduled for completion by 2015, will be located at Chaulnes, 80 mi. north of the nation's capital. The French government's decision to proceed with the $6.5-billion investment is far from ending a long-running dispute. Moreover, the Chaulnes project is so controversial it might not survive presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for the second quarter of 2002.
Polly Prelinger has been promoted to senior vice president-marketing from vice president-aircraft marketing for the JetFleet Management Corp., Burlingame, Calif.
The U.S. Air Force successfully completed a critical flight test of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile that should clear the way for the program to start low-rate production. But the development still has several challenges ahead that could overshadow the program and jeopardize its fielding.
