COLUMBUS, Miss. — The sale of Airbus Helicopters UH-72 Lakota aircraft to Thailand, as well as the U.S. Army’s plan to purchase 100 Lakotas for the pilot training center at Ft. Rucker, Ala., have given a boost to a program that was nearly on the ropes one year ago. Company officials believe that the Foreign Military Sale (FMS) will be the first of many with Thailand and other countries. “We hope to have a recurring contract every year to replace their aging aircraft,” says Marc Paganini, president and CEO of Airbus Helicopters, Inc., of the Thai army.
LONDON — The Canadian government has ordered 15 Bell 429 light twin-engined helicopters for use by the country’s coast guard. The CDN$172 million ($152 million) deal, announced on May 12, is part of a wider renewal of the country’s coast guard fleet that also includes new ships and helicopters.
NEW DELHI – India’s first mission to Mars is on track and should enter orbit in September, the country’s top scientist says. The unmanned “Maangalyaan” probe, launched last year, has “now completed 60 percent” of its journey, ISRO Chief K. Radhakrishnan says. “The mission is going well and will reach the orbit on Sept. 24, 2014,” he says.
ORLANDO, Fla. — The FAA plans to approve its chosen unmanned aircraft system (UAS) test sites to issue experimental airworthiness certificates to overcome a backlog within the agency and allow initial civil operations to begin at the sites. Initially the six test sites are being granted certificates of authorization (COA) to fly UAS as public aircraft operators, but that comes with restrictions on operations, says Jim Williams, manager of the FAA’s UAS integration office.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Honeywell has licensed its RQ-16 T-Hawk vertical-takeoff-and-landing unmanned aircraft to Virginia-based Avid, which helped design and build the ducted-fan air vehicle. The agreement covers both the 22-lb., single-duct, gasoline-powered T-Hawk micro air vehicle (MAV) and the commercial 4.4-lb., dual-duct, electric-powered cDUV. Avid has been licensed to sell both vehicles for commercial, industrial and military applications. Honeywell will continue to sell the T-Hawk, but no longer markets the cDUV.
While U.S. Navy leaders still call the Ohio-class submarine fleet replacements the leading shipbuilding priority in the coming decades, the path toward that program still has to be determined, says Michael Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries, one of the partners for building Virginia-class attack subs.
LONDON—Aerostructures and engine component supplier GKN Aerospace says it wants to grow by building greater ties with Boeing’s commercial aircraft division. The division—part of the wider GKN group—is looking for further expansion following its strategic takeover of Volvo Aero during July 2012, an acquisition which has made the company the second largest supplier of aero-engine components behind MTU and the engine OEMs themselves.
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance (ULA), which operates the embattled Atlas V, has enough of the rocket’s Russian engines in storage to meet its commitment to the U.S. Air Force in the company’s 36-booster bulk buy inked in December, according to a Boeing executive. “We believe we can deliver on the block buy with the engines we have,” says Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems. ULA has 16 RD-180s on U.S. soil, according to an industry official.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Legal wrangling over the commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court and most likely involve the use of UAS for news gathering, a law expert told the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show May 12. “There will be a UAS case in front of the Supreme Court and it will be a First Amendment case,” says Doug Marshall, division manager for UAS regulatory and standards development at New Mexico State University.
As NASA and other government space agencies seek private-sector partners to stretch their budgets, a longtime commercial-space guru suggests they pay more attention to advances in the guts of the spacecraft than to the spacecraft themselves. Antonio Elias, executive vice president and chief technical officer of Orbital Sciences Corp., suggested that even the low-cost launchers that SpaceX is flying don’t offer as much potential benefit for public-private partnerships as the application of Moore’s law to spacecraft microelectronics.
ORLANDO, Fla. —The FAA is working to approve limited commercial operations by unmanned aircraft in specific applications, such as crop spraying, that pose a low risk to those on the ground. Four industries have approached the agency about using legislation in the 2012 FAA reauthorization act to get an exemption to the ban on civil UAS, says Jim Williams, UAS integration office manager.
EDWARDS AFB, Calif. – NASA says it remains committed to its plan to fly the International Space Station until 2024, at least for now, despite Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin’s May 13 announcement of the end of Russian cooperation on the ISS in 2020.
ORLANDO, Fla.—NASA is preparing a research program to develop an automated low-altitude air traffic management system so that large numbers of civil unmanned aircraft can operate in uncontrolled airspace. The Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management (UTM) program is planned to begin in fiscal 2015 with the near-term goal of enabling initial low-altitude UAS operations within five years, principal investigator Parimal Kopardekar told the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show here.
HOUSTON — The first Japanese command of the International Space Station drew to a close late May 13, as the Soyuz TMA-11M crew transport departed the six-person orbiting laboratory with Japan’s Koichi Wakata, American Rick Mastracchio and Russian Mikhail Turin and descended safely to Earth. The capsule touched down under parachute southeast of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 9:58 p.m., EDT, or May 14, 7:58 a.m. local time, ending 188 days in orbit for the three men.
