Lockheed Martin Navigation Systems has received a contract extension valued at up to $2.8 million from the U.S. Air Force GPS Joint Program Office to continue development within the system architecture and requirements definition study for the GPS-3 satellite program.
NASA General Counsel Paul Pastorek is pulling together an educator-in-space competition aimed at creating a cadre of teachers within the astronaut corps. Administrator Sean O'Keefe says the competition should feed a new class of astronaut candidates expected to be picked late next year or early in 2004. Pastorek, an O'Keefe pal who has served as president of the Louisiana state school board, is working with the Education Dept. to make sure NASA's renewed emphasis on education meshes with Bush Administration education policy.
TRW Chairman Philip A. Odeen last week said management was evaluating several ``good, solid bids'' from U.S. and non-U.S. companies interested in purchasing TRW's aeronautics business. He expects a winning bidder to be selected ``within weeks, not months.'' He said management is on track to split the company into two independent enterprises--automotive, and defense and electronics. Simultaneously, TRW is engaged in daily intensive negotiations with Northrop Grumman, which wants to purchase the whole corporation.
NASA engineers are hopeful they can develop nuclear-powered long-distance Mars rovers for launch in 2009. But the agency's new space nuclear power initiative probably won't produce a nuclear-electric propulsion system in time to enable an earlier arrival at Pluto than the gravity-assisted trip already planned. A near term program is just getting underway to develop a new generation of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that convert the heat from decaying plutonium fuel into electricity.
A China Southern Airlines official denied Chinese media reports last week that China's merger of 10 airlines into three groups has been put off for at least two years. ``Right now, I don't see what impact China Northern's air crash will have on our restructuring,'' the official said. China Southern is to take over China Northern.
The U.S. Army wants to greatly increase the size of its aviation special operations organization, with more helicopters, people, and overseas locations. The growth strategy, if approved, would add more than 60 additional special operations aircraft to the force, both MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60 Black Hawks. It would represent a significant expansion of the traditionally relatively small Army component.
Having weathered five bad years, Korean Air Chairman and CEO Yang Ho Cho sees hope in 2002. Korean Air consistently ranks as No. 2 in scheduled airline cargo services. After flight safety issues tarred its standing in the 1990s, it is looking for improvement in its passenger ranking, as well. In that regard, Cho has reason for optimism. The reopening of code sharing with Air France in April for services to Paris and with Delta Air Lines this month for services to the U.S. greatly expands Korean Air's European and U.S. networks.
A NASA technique used to automatically tune compression of space imagery is now commercially available from Hawaii-based Six D Inc. (www.sixd.com). The ``DCTune'' technique, developed at the Ames Research Center, is based on the JPEG compression scheme and uses a computer model of human perception to adjust the JPEG parameters to produce an image with the least perceptible error in the smallest file size. . . . Forming Technologies Inc. (www.forming.com) has added its ``Fast Suite'' sheet metal expertise to the tools available under Dassault's V5 design system.
Trimble will design, test and qualify the GPS receiver for Raytheon's Miniature Airborne GPS Receiver (MAGR) 2000, under a $2.1-million contract. The new receiver is being developed to meet the military's navigation warfare requirements as well as the integrity needs for civil air navigation. Trimble's Force 5 Gram-S GPS module will give the new MAGR 12-channel tracking of all satellites in view, compared with five channels on the original MAGR. It incorporates a selective availability antispoofing module (Saasm) using the architecture selected by the Defense Dept.
Magellan Aerospace Corp. has won a $121.8-million contract award from the U.S. Air Force to perform repair and overhaul on General Electric J85 engines and components.
Larry Lynn, director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has received the Singapore Defense Technology Distinguished Fellowship. The award recognizes Lynn's contributions in forging links between the U.S. and Singapore in defense science and technology.
The House of Representatives is poised to make incremental increases to President Bush's $70.2-billion weapons procurement budget request for Fiscal 2003, adding funds here and there to a number of aircraft programs, as well as to missile defense.
John Hamre, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies will be the 14th recipient of Aviation Week & Space Technology's John Curtis Sword. Hamre was deputy U.S. Defense secretary from 1997-99. Previously, he was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) for four years and a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The presentation to Hamre will be a featured event at the Society of British Aerospace Companies' Farnborough International dinner on July 23.
David Adams has become group vice president of Curtiss-Wright Sensors and Controls, Gastonia, N.C. He was vice president-marketing and business development of Curtiss-Wright Flight Systems.
ITT Industries Night Vision Div. received a U.S. Army Omnibus VI procurement for Generation 3 night vision (image intensification) devices. The potential value of the five-year award is $450 million and consists of two separate contracts: an aviators' night vision equipment (``winner-take-all'') and a ground forces' night vision equipment (60/40 split) arrangement. ITT received 100% of the aviation contract and 60% of the ground contract. Northrop Grumman received the remaining 40%.
The Indian Air Force grounded six MiG squadrons comprising 72 aircraft last week following the May 3 crash of a MiG-21 into a building that killed eight people on the ground. The crash struck a two-story bank after the pilot ejected successfully. It occurred in Jullundur, 60 mi. from the Pakistani border in the state of Punjab. In addition to the eight dead, local authorities said 16 people were injured by fire following the explosion of some 1,000 gal. of fuel after the impact. ``I was flying at 6,000 ft. when the engine failed,'' a Flt. Lt.
Gene Carpenter has been named market and business development director for AirLiance Materials of Chicago. He was vice president-marketing and sales for AAR Engine Component Services.
Occar European armaments procurement agency has awarded a $45-million contract to the Dornier defense electronics division to supply 160 EuroGrid digital map systems for Eurocopter Tiger helicopters.
Schweizer Aircraft Corp. has received certification for its turbine-powered Model 333 helicopter from Italy's Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile. The first aircraft has been sold by Elialpi Helicopters in Rivanazzano to a private operator. In addition, the company's first Model 300 Cbi has been sold to CSE Aviation Ltd. in Oxford, England. CSE officials plan to exhibit and demonstrate the lightweight, piston-powered helicopter during the Farnborough air show late in July.
John H. Walker, CEO of the Weirton (W.Va.) Steel Corp., has been appointed to the board of directors of the UAL Corp. He will take the seat that had been occupied by Jack Creighton before he was named chairman/CEO.
The Nov. 12, 2001, crash of American Airlines Flight 587--the NTSB's first airline probe involving an inflight failure of a major structural component made of composites--marked a ``new day'' in terms of accident investigation, said NTSB Chair Marion C. Blakey on a recent visit to NASA Langley Research Center. Blakey emphasized ``many more months'' of work lie ahead before it is determined why the tail fin separated from the Airbus A300-600 and led to the deaths of 265 people.
Top NASA managers chose Air Force Maj. Gen. (ret.) Michael C. Kostelnik to be the program executive officer for the International Space Station, although he won't have exactly that job title. Like Pentagon PEOs, Kostelnik will coordinate program activities relating to ISS across the agency, including space shuttle flights to the orbiting facility (AW&ST Apr. 15, p. 19). Kostelnik's Air Force career, which ended with his Jan.
General Electric's F404-102D has been selected to power Boeing's X-45B unmanned combat air vehicle. The engine, a derivative of the one used on the F/A-18 and F-117, will replace Honeywell's F124, which is being used to power the X-45A. The size of Boeing's UCAV has grown and with it the need for a more powerful engine. GE is to supply three engines for the flight test program. It said the new F404-102D is designed specifically for single-engine applications with reliability and redundancy. It will also have low-observable features.
