Within a span of five days, the U.S. Congress passed a $787-billion economic stimulus package, the government doubled its backing of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to $400 billion, President Barack Obama unveiled a $75-billion proposal to stave off home foreclosures and General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC asked for another $22 billion in federal bailouts. That’s a lot of money—roughly the equivalent of funding two Iraq wars. But Sandy Cutler isn’t holding his breath.
Your accolades in the Laureate nomination for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Team are well deserved (AW&ST Jan. 12, p. 53). However, I question your labeling it the “NASA/Lockheed Martin . . . Team.” Not one of the named members works for NASA and only one (Kevin McNeill) for Lockheed Martin. Jim Graf and Richard Zurek are employed by Caltech at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Alfred McEwen works for the University of Arizona.
David Pitchforth has been named managing director of Boeing U.K. Rotorcraft Support . He was director of business transformation/senior vice president for U.K. government business of the AgustaWestland Military Div.
The Indian air force plans to expand its combat fleet to 42 squadrons by 2022, from the 32 at the end of 2007, says the defense minister, adding that the locally developed Light Combat Aircraft will enter service in 2010-11.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has become the first U.S. facility to install and test avian radar. The risk of bird strikes to aircraft was highlighted on Jan. 15 when Canada geese caused a dual-engine failure on US Airways Flight 1549. The FAA-funded research project at Sea-Tac is a collaborative effort with the University of Illinois. Sea-Tac’s experimental avian radar is installed on top of the airport office building and will be used to monitor bird movements in the vicinity of the airport.
One increasingly important safety-related educational topic during the 2009 Heli-Expo show this week in Anaheim, Calif., will be how to reduce accidents involving emergency medical service helicopters flying at night in reduced visibility. During the past 20 years, 49% of accidents involving EMS rotorcraft were traced to flying in reduced visibility at night, and that combination continues to be a serious safety issue, according to the Helicopter Assn. International (HAI).
Clyde Space, a Glasgow, Scotland-based company specializing in components for cubesats and other small spacecraft, is at work on a constellation of tiny satellites that can give emergency service personnel worldwide quick notice of a blooming wildfire before it erupts into a conflagration such as those that have ravaged southern Australia. In this image, collected Feb. 13 with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua Earth-Observing System satellite, the deadly fires continued to burn in the mountains east of Melbourne.
Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research has completed tests of a full-scale ScanEagle Compressed Carriage, long-endurance autonomous unmanned vehicle for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. The tests were conducted in NIAR’s Beech Wind Tunnel and centered on collecting aerodynamic data on thrust and drag. An electric motor and propeller were used to replicate the aircraft’s heavy fuel propulsion system, according to David Langness, program manager for ScanEagle. The vehicle is 4 ft. long with a 7.5-ft.
Although its membership companies are now reeling from the global financial crisis and political recrimination in Washington, the General Aviation Manufacturers Assn. (GAMA) reported Feb. 17 that 2008 was a year in which the industry posted a record $24.8 billion in deliveries.
User feedback is causing Selex Galileo to adjust its plans for the Falco tactical unmanned air vehicle, with an eye on improving payload options and making the system more responsive in the field.
Stephen R. Ball has been appointed CEO of Lockheed Martin UK , succeeding Ian Stopps, who is retiring. Ball has been managing director of Lockheed Martin UK INSYS.
NASA and the European Space Agency will take steps toward merging their outer-planet exploration plans, eyeing a mission that would send separate U.S. and European spacecraft to visit the four largest moons of Jupiter circa 2026, while also researching a possible joint visit to Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus.
Chris Strong has become vice president-membership marketing for the Washington-based National Business Aviation Assn. He was director of business operations for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn.
Washington may be full of change, but its mystification with North Korea is no different, nor is its concern about missile launches. North Korea has said that a widely expected launch is related to its space efforts, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Tokyo last week that Pyongyang has not complied with international rules on notification of space launches. “We will continue to seek ways to discourage them from launching a missile for any purpose,” she said.
Astrium Services has concluded an agreement with the French armed forces to supply Ku-band up- and downlink bandwidth for France’s SIDM medium-altitude long-endurance UAVs deployed in Afghanistan. Astrium already provides such service for SIDMs based in France. The Afghan SIDMs were accepted in January and recently flew their first missions, Astrium said.
Juliana P. Blackwell has been named director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Geodetic Survey . She was chief of the survey’s Observation and Analysis Div. Blackwell succeeds Dave Zilkoski, who is retiring.
Tan Soon Keat and Garrick Andrews have been appointed surveyors in Singapore and Wellington, New Zealand, respectively, for London-based Airclaims . Keat was sales director for AAR Landing Gear Services, while Andrews was head of fleet and maintenance management for Vincent Aviation.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope has imaged a gamma-ray burst with the greatest total energy ever witnessed. The explosion, designated GRB 080916C, took place at 7:13 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15, 2008, in the constellation Carina. Working in tandem, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope and Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor instruments provided a view of the blast’s initial emission from energies between 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light.
The timing couldn’t be much worse: Airbus is getting ready to birth a new generation of freighter aircraft just as the industry is seeing near-unprecedented declines in demand. But the European aircraft maker is looking beyond the near- and potentially mid-term crisis, and is making a long-term bet on creating a stable of freighter offerings. In the process, it is also trying to once more wrestle marketshare away from its main rival, Boeing, which has long dominated the freighter market.
Alexander M. Cutler TITLE: Chairman/CEO, Eaton Corp. AGE: 57 BIRTHPLACE: Milwaukee EDUCATION: Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and Master of Business Administration from Dartmouth College CAREER: Began in 1975 as a financial analyst for Cutler-Hammer, which was acquired by Eaton in 1979. Named Eaton CEO in 1995 and chairman in 2000.
NASA moved its Kepler observatory to Pad 17 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Feb. 19, although high winds prevented immediate stacking, in preparation for a Mar. 5 liftoff on a United Launch Alliance Delta II at 10:48 p.m. Built by Ball Aerospace, Kepler will be launched into a solar orbit trailing Earth by about 9 million mi. From there, it will use a 1.4-meter (4.6-ft.) telescope and a 93-megapixel camera to search for planets in a survey of more than 100,000 Sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way.
Royal Navy Harrier GR9s have dropped 12 of the new Paveway 4 GPS/laser-guided bombs in anger in Afghanistan, with all weapons delivered successfully, according to a Navy officer. Not all the bombs struck their targets, though. In two cases, after weapons release, women and children were spotted in the target area so aircrew shifted the laser spot used to guide the weapon to deliberately miss and have the weapon impact in a unpopulated area. It’s not just in laser-mode that aircraft were adapting weapons employment on the fly.
Japan Airlines will merge its four aircraft maintenance subsidiaries as a single company to be called JAL Engineering Co. Ltd., to improve productivity. The merged company will also take on some of the business of the group’s main airline operating company.
First flight of the A330-200F is planned for this year, as Airbus enters the final phase of the aircraft’s production process. Parts for the first A330-200F are now starting to come together. The center wingbox has been built and the nose landing gear bay have been completed. The critical components are due soon at the production site for integration in Saint-Nazaire, France, before going to Toulouse, where the aircraft will be completed.
The U.S. airline industry’s top priority was passed over in the $787-billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress. The gargantuan spending bill contains just $150 million in NextGen air traffic management funding—through NASA—far short of the $4 billion lobbied for by the Air Transport Assn. (ATA). The measure did include $1.1 billion in Airport Improvement Program funding and $1 billion for the Homeland Security Dept. to install in-line baggage screening machines at airports. “Aviation didn’t make the cut,” laments John Meehan, ATA’s chief operating officer.
