The majority of the 161 unclassified milsats forecast for production in the next decade will go into service in the near term with production tapering in the outyears.
Hannele Malin has been appointed VP-internal auditing at Finnair, succeeding Erkki Lehtinen, who will retire. Malin was manager for government, risk and compliance services at Deloitte & Touche.
U.S. Army Gen. (ret.) Rick Lynch and Paul McDuffee have joined the board of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Arlington, Va. Lynch commanded the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Div. at Fort Hood, Texas. McDuffee is Insitu's principal interface with the FAA on the commercial viability of unmanned aircraft.
Gen. Jean-Paul Palomeros (see photo), chief of staff of the French air force, has become director of the European Air Group, based at RAF Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, for a two-year term. He succeeds Lt. Gen. Aarne Kreuzinger-Janik, commander of the German air force.
Mike Leinback has become director of human spaceflight operations at Denver-based United Launch Alliance. He was launch team leader for all NASA space shuttle missions launched since 2000.
Bill Gerstenmaier (see photo), NASA associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, has received the Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics award, given by the Washington-based American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was recognized for his leadership in human spaceflight, culminating in the space shuttle and International Space Station programs.
The move is largely an administrative step after Airbus determined the entire fleet would likely suffer component cracking due to a manufacturing process flaw.
Bernd Munzenmayer has become senior sales adviser for Pro Star Aviation, Londonderry, N.H., supporting new Sales Director Clark Gordon. Munzenmayer is a founder of Pro Star. Julie Weber has been promoted to VP from senior director of people for Southwest Airlines.
David Russell has joined Gogo, Itaska, Ill., as senior VP and general manager of Europe and the Middle East for commercial aviation. He was VP-strategic programs for SITA Group.
Cancer has claimed three notable space pioneers. Roger Boisjoly died Jan. 6 in Nephi, Utah. He was 73. As an engineer at Morton Thiokol, he warned that cold weather could cause the O-rings, which sealed field joints in the space shuttle solid-fuel boosters, to fail. Six months later, the shuttle Challenger, launched over Boisjoly's objections after a below-freezing night, was lost when its O-rings failed.
NASA's fiscal 2013 budget request will reflect, and be reflected in, space-exploration spending and priorities worldwide. That isn't a good thing. Those who view civil space exploration as both an uplifting human pursuit and an important economic driver are sure to be disappointed by the details of the U.S. budget plan to be released Feb. 13. We know from previous plans that it will be flat and tight, with no major new initiatives and a lot of backfill from previous spending shortfalls.
After two launch failures with Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Taurus XL solid-fuel rocket, NASA has decided to try to launch its replacement Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) on another vehicle. The agency and the company signed a bilateral contract modification Feb. 2 that will terminate Orbital’s task order to loft OCO-2 under its NASA Launch Services II (NLS-II) contract. An agency spokesman said the action does not end Orbital’s NLS-II contract, which provides NASA with different launch options under a “catalogue” approach.
NASA will take only an $89 million cut in its topline spending request for fiscal 2013 compared to this year’s operating plan, sources said Feb. 10, but the $17.711 billion NASA budget proposal due out Feb. 13 will axe the joint effort with Europe to return samples from Mars, to pay for development overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope.
Michael Stofferahn has been appointed VP-North American sales for the Kaydon Bearings Div., Muskegon, Mich. He was VP and general manager of Rexnord Product Services.
PARIS — A joint European-Russian proposal that assumes no NASA participation in ExoMars has been submitted to the directors of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos ahead of a Feb. 15 meeting of ESA leaders.
Facing estimates of at least a 30% possibility the International Space Station will need to be abandoned prematurely, NASA isn't taking any chances that the commercial cargo and crew vehicles it is funding will worsen those odds by causing a mishap.
