CHC HELICOPTER CORP., St. John's, Newfoundland, and VECTOR AEROSPACE CORP completed the previously announced public offering in Canada of 22 million units of Vector, previously a subsidiary of CHC. Gross proceeds to CHC are about $192.5 million. Vector now owns the repair and overhaul business previously owned by CHC.
Immediate inspection of the CFM56-7B engine accessory gearboxes on Boeing's next-generation 737-700s and 737-800s was ordered Thursday by the FAA. The emergency Airworthiness Directive follows two June 26 inflight engine shutdowns, one by Russia's Transaero Airlines and the other by Norway's Braathens Airlines.
DECRANE AIRCRAFT HOLDINGS INC., El Segundo, Calif., acquired Dettmers Industries Inc., a Florida-based maker of cabin interior products for corporate jets. Dettmers, whose revenues have grown 30% annually over the past three years, will be operated as a separate subsidiary of DeCrane.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, incoming head of U.S. Space Command/North American Aerospace Command, in testimony submitted at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination, says Air Force budget authority presently allocated to space is 9.63% in this fiscal year (FY 1998) and should rise to 20% between 2003 and 2015. There is only a marginal increase in the period of the Future Years Defense Plan, up to about 2005. The significant increase is projected to occur later.
Spacehab Inc. has purchased privately held Johnson Engineering, hoping to use the in-house skills of the Houston firm to expand Spacehab's capability to support human spaceflight on a commercial basis in keeping with NASA's shift in that direction.
Russian cosmonauts training at Johnson Space Center may be getting paid twice under a bilateral U.S./Russian agreement that requires each country to pay spacefarers who are training at its facilities "at a standard afforded its own flight crews," according to an analysis by NASA's Office of Inspector General.
FLIR SYSTEMS INC., Portland, Ore., completed a public offering of 2.4 million shares of common stock by the company and a shareholder at $17.25 per share. Of the total, 1.6 million were offered by Flir and 760,500 by a shareholder. Net proceeds to the company will be used for repayment of certain debt.
Boeing Co., lead system integrator for the National Missile Defense system, is proposing a speed-up in the selection of the system's exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV), according to John Peller, who runs the LSI program for the company.
House National Security Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee staffers met informally last week on the fiscal 1999 defense authorization conference which won't actually get underway until the House returns from its recess July 14. The Senate returns today. Congressional sources said the two staffs basically identified the issues that can be settled on the staff level and those that will have to be negotiated by the members of the two committees in conference.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works will have to haul the X-33 Space Shuttle-replacement testbed back from its suborbital test flights overland next summer because the Shuttle program won't give up one of its two Boeing 747s for ferry flights. According to Johnson Space Center managers, the "significant" modifications necessary for one of the Shuttle ferry planes to carry the X-33, which is 63 feet long and 68 feet wide, probably would preclude the plane from carrying out its usual duties in a crunch.
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor will spend the summer collecting data from its 11.6 - hour elliptical orbit before shifting back to aerobraking in September. Controllers believe that will allow the damaged probe to start mapping the surface from a low circular orbit next March, still on schedule after a flapping solar array forced a change in plans (DAILY, Nov. 11, 1997).
Last-minute language added to the NASA spending bill by the full House Appropriations Committee gives the Triana whole-Earth photosat another lease on life. Initially the VA, HUD and independent agencies subcommittee killed funding for the project, proposed by Vice President Gore as a way to put an Earth image from the Lagrange point on the Internet (DAILY, June 29).
US Airways ordered seven Airbus A330-300s, placed options for seven more, and took another 16 reserved delivery positions. Stephen Wolf, chairman, said that, combined with up to 400 A320s ordered in 1996, US Airways "will have the most modern fleet in the air within just a few years' time." The first of the 400 A320s will be delivered this October.
Air France has decided to postpone by one year the conversion of two options on Boeing 777 aircraft into firm orders, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, the airline's chairman, said Thursday in Paris. The aircraft are now expected to be delivered in 2001 instead of 2000. Spinetta explained that the decision was linked to poor market conditions in Asia, where the 777s will operate. He said the delay didn't mean Air France was reconsidering its order for a total of ten B777s plus ten options.
SPAR AEROSPACE has mated the mobile base system it built for the International Space Station to the mobile transporter built in California by Spar subsidiary Astro Aerospace. Canadian Astronaut Julie Payette and U.S. Astronaut Paul Richard performed fit checks using extravehicular activity tools at Spar's Brampton, Ontario, facility, as the two pieces will be delivered to orbit separately. The mobile transporter will move the mobile base around the International Station, where it will provide a work platform and storage area.
The U.S. Air Force over the next two months will be negotiating the last contract with Lockheed Martin for Titan IV launch vehicles, according to launch program officials at Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The contract will close out the last buy of 39 Titan IVs, due to finish launching in 2002. Meanwhile, work is underway throughout the Air Force launch community to prepare for the Enhanced Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), which will replace the Titan.
The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet program has passed the 3,000 flight hour mark, Boeing Co. reported. It said the milestone was reached July 1 in testing at NAS Patuxent River, Md. Seven Super Hornets are undergoing flight test at Patuxent River and such other sites at the Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake, and Edwards AFB, both in California, and NAS Lakehurst, N.J.
Russia's ground-based Strategic Rocket Forces orbited a Molniya-3 communications satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the North of Russia early yesterday, as the Russian Navy was making final preparations for the first launch of an orbital payload from a submarine at sea.
Titan Corp., San Diego, agreed in separate transactions to acquire two companies, Delfin Systems and VisiCom, and completed its acquisition of Horizons Technology Inc. The acquisitions of Delfin and VisiCom are the fourth and fifth this year for Titan, which provides information technology and electronic systems and services for government and commercial customers.
BRITISH ARMY's new Challenger 2 tank has been delivered to its first regiment in Germany, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defense. It said that when deliveries are complete, all armored regiments of the British Army will be equipped with the new tank. The next step in the program is for the Army to begin full field training, the MOD said. This, it said, will culminate in battlegroup deployments in live-firing exercises at the British Army Training Unit, Suffield, Canada, next year. The first regiment, according to the MOD, will be ready to deploy in late 1999.
Air France has placed firm orders for 20 more Airbus A319s and A321s, and has taken options on another 20. Deliveries will begin next May to the carrier, which has been operating A320s for over 10 years and is Airbus' first customer. Its A320s are powered by CFM International CFM56 engines.
The U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range is putting its Year 2000 fixes to the test today, when engineers will fly remotely controlled jet aircraft through the New Mexico range while rolling tracking computers through five different date scenarios. "If the computers have a problem with the date change, the results should be immediately observable because instruments will lose contact with the jets," test managers say in a prepared statement. "Other more subtle results will take time to analyze by looking at the test data afterwards."
Alliant Techsystems, Minneapolis, conducted a series of operations with its Outrider Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV), as the vehicle completed its longest flight - 120 miles at an altitude of 9,500 feet - during recent flight demonstrations at the company's operations and training center in Hondo, Tex. Don Cattell, vice president, unmanned vehicle systems and Outrider program director, said the program has met all objectives of the 26-month Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program.
Officials at the U.S. Air Force's Space&Missile Systems Center (SMSC) here are devising new architectures to modernize existing Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and user equipment to improve military and civilian access while defending against potential manipulation by adversaries. "The newest element in GPS modernization is prevention - the tools we need to deny opposition access to GPS," Lt. Col. William McCasland, chief engineer for the GPS Joint Program Office, told The DAILY in an interview.
