The launch of India's first Mars orbiter, which was postponed for eight days due to bad weather in the Pacific, has been rescheduled for Nov. 5. The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will be boosted by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, which was also used for the Chandrayaan-1 Moon mission, on Nov. 5 at 2:36 p.m. local time from the Sriharikota spaceport, Indian Space Research Organization Chairman K. Radhakrishnan says. The MOM will not use a direct trajectory to Mars. Once launched, it will orbit the Earth for 25 days before embarking on a nine-month voyage to the red planet.
Julie Robinson, who oversees U.S.-side science on the International Space Station (ISS), names a one-time dark horse as her No. 1 research result to date from the orbiting laboratory. Medical researchers started running experiments in space more than a decade ago to see if working in microgravity would make it possible to encapsulate cancer drugs in tiny bubbles that could be targeted on specific tumors in the body. It turns out that it was, as the crew of ISS Expedition 5 discovered in 2002.
Intertrade, which facilitated the establishment of the airliner surplus parts supplier business four decades ago, has added engine parts to its portfolio, completing its evolution from a one-product specialist to a full-service used-components supplier.
Raytheon has completed flight tests of a low-cost missile that was developed rapidly to shoot down mortars, rockets and unmanned aircraft, but has yet to find a home for the weapon.
Five companies are designing long-endurance ship-based surveillance and strike unmanned aircraft under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (Darpa) Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node program. TERN is intended to demonstrate the capability to provide Predator-class medium-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned-aircraft capabilities from the flight decks of small ships, primarily the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship-2 (LCS-2).
The Juno spacecraft's recent Earth swing-by provided inspiration for a concept that transfers the speed accumulated over time by a gravity-assisted object to an awaiting manned vehicle, accelerating it to a similar velocity (AW&ST Oct. 14/21, p. 16). This would be achieved by employing the opposite of an electromagnetic rail gun: the electromagnetic rail target. As the high-velocity object approaches the target vehicle, it divides into electromagnetic “bullets” deployed as a linear chain.
Franklin Miller has been appointed chairman of the board of directors of the Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass. He succeeds John Gordon. New members of the board are Joanne Maguire and Lena Goldberg. Michael Wallace, director of the nuclear energy policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has been named a member of the Draper's corporation. Miller is a principal at the Scowcroft Group and member of the U.S.
While it may have been a quieter, business-as-usual NBAA show for the established players in the corporate jet engine market, it was the relative newcomers that made the headlines.
The U.K. RAF will retire the last of its Lockheed C-130K Hercules transport aircraft this week as it prepares for the entry into service of the Airbus A400M Atlas. The RAF has operated 66 C-130Ks, the first entering service in 1967. Since then, the type has supported almost every British military operation. The C-130K fleet has dwindled in size since the introduction of the modernized C-130J. The remaining 24 Js are expected to operate until around 2022.
On the eve of the NBAA convention, Bombardier marked Learjet's 50th anniversary by presenting the first two Model 75s off the line to their new owners: a real estate businessman and a Canadian charter company. Both aircraft are replacing Lear 45s. The updated aircraft features a Garmin G5000 flight deck and Honeywell TFE-731-40B engines, and carries a price tag of $13.7 million.
Nextant Aerospace plans to remanufacture Beechcraft King Air C90s, replacing the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT-6 engines with GE H80 turboprops and the Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 with Garmin's G1000 integrated avionics panel. The refurbished aircraft will carry a Nextant warranty. The Cleveland company said it chose to rework the C90 because of its large installed base of more than 1,500 aircraft, and so it would serve as a low-cost entry-level turbine aircraft. The projected price for what Nextant calls the G90XT is $2.2 million, or about half that of a new model.
Honeywell engineers and human-factors experts are investigating a range of new human-machine interface technologies including touchscreen displays, voice recognition systems and “assisted interaction,” a virtual co-pilot. Part government contract and part Honeywell internal research and development, the work is designed to lower workload and increase safety for pilots of next-generation transport and business aviation aircraft.
Aviation Partners Inc. (API) is offering to refit any Boeing Business Jets with its split scimitar winglet (see photo). The modification is already being adapted by airlines operating the Boeing 737, from which the BBJ is derived. The modification is said to improve fuel burn by 2.5-3% and thus increase range by 200 nm. Gary Dunn, API's vice president of sales and marketing, says he expects operators of “a very healthy percentage” of the roughly 130 delivered BBJs to adopt the signature modification.
One of the unintended consequences of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and its annual threat of sequestration—the automatic, widespread budget rescissions plaguing federal agencies since March—is the turnabout that will occur in the ratio of Defense Department procurement to research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E). According to analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank here, since fiscal 1955, the ratio has averaged 2.1, meaning the Pentagon was spending more than $2 in procurement for every $1 of RDT&E.
Jim Meier has been named vice president-government business development for the Greenwich AeroGroup of Wichita. He was senior vice president-aviation services for the Sabreliner Corp.
Doug Gerull has been named chief operating officer of Surrey Satellite Technology U.S., Englewood, Colo. He was cofounder and a director of DigitalGlobe and had been executive vice president of the Intergraph Corp.
Eclipse Aerospace has delivered its first Eclipse 550 very light jet to Fred Phillips, president of Petrolift Aviation Services of Shreveport, La. Phillips has owned two Eclipse 500s. The upgraded EA550 features a synthetic vision, XM satellite weather, dual flight management systems with WAAS LPV and antiskid brakes.
