Lockheed Martin and a team of manufacturers and aftermarket service companies are launching the TriStar Alliance to bolster support for L-1011s in a bid to keep those aircraft flying--and marketable--for several more years. LockMart's Aircraft and Logistics Center in Greenville, S.C., is heading the effort with Rolls-Royce and a supplier team that includes AAR, AlliedSignal, Hamilton Sundstrand and Rockwell Collins. Canadian L-1011 operator Air Transat also is an alliance member. Main target customers for remarketing L-1011s are charter and cargo operators.
A 124 X 12-mi. strip of rolling plains has been chosen as the touchdown site for NASA's Mars Polar Lander, which is due to arrive on Dec. 3 for a three-month study of the unique region around the planet's barren southern pole. NASA officials selected the landing site from an area the size of California after studying imagery and 3D topographic measurements gathered since June by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The location contains some surface features but no slopes steeper than 10 deg.
NASA's new TRW-built Chandra X-ray Observatory has returned its first images, elating project scientists, who said the instruments and optics on the $1.5-billion telescope are performing as expected.
When the U.K. gets its new Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor), it will have higher resolution imagery and a more automated mission system in a much smaller, less expensive aircraft than the U.S. Air Force's Joint-STARS.
NASA and industry are about to narrow preliminary options for possible development of a new U.S. manned spacecraft--the Crew/Cargo Transfer Vehicle, or CCTV. The spacecraft, which could be developed starting as early as 2004-05, could supplement the space shuttle until a shuttle replacement comes on line sometime after 2010. Two factors are driving interest in the CCTV: -- Increased NASA/industry pessimism about commercial Lockheed Martin development of the VentureStar single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle (RLV).
Nothing is more daunting for an operations center than the prospect of converting millions of paper-based technical documents to an electronic format when the center cannot afford downtime because the documents support daily operations. AlliedSignal Technical Services Corp. undertook just such a task for the Air Force Space Command's worldwide Satellite Control Network at Schriever AFB, Colo. Besides tracking satellites, including more than 600 in low-Earth orbit, Space Command catalogs thousands of particles of space debris.
NASA and the Canadian National Research Council's Institute for Aerospace Research in Ottawa have signed an agreement to coordinate and collaborate on aviation icing research. The recently signed pact will help develop a strategic, integrated icing research plan that shares information and coordinates research facilities while eliminating duplicate effort, according to Dave Marcotte, manager of Airborne Research Program, Flight Research Laboratory at NRC. Both airframe and runway surface icing will be addressed.
Guenther Matschnigg, currently vice president-technical base maintenance organization at Austrian Airlines, is to join the International Air Transport Assn. in Geneva on Sept. 1 as senior director-designate for operations and infrastructure. He will assume the full title Jan. 1 following the scheduled retirement of Karel Ledeboer.
The Air Force and top Pentagon civilians have agreed to spend more on the Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. Now they're arguing about how much. Acquisition honcho Jacques Gansler says an additional $510 million is needed. The Air Force thinks it can do what needs to be done with no more than $390 million. The deal the Air Force is offering is a complicated agreement to field Global Hawk as early as possible and keep enhancing it, all while limiting engineering development to one year and keeping the production line open.
Officials of Nav Canada met with Russian counterparts last week to discuss the feasibility of expanded use of polar routes for North American flights. Nav Canada is the private, not-for-profit company that now runs Canada's air traffic services. Its officials project that polar routes could save some flights several hours and thousands of dollars in fuel compared to the circuitous transpacific routes now in use. For instance, they said, a polar routing for a New York-Hong Kong flight could save 5 hr. flying time over the typical routing of New York-Anchorage-Hong Kong.
Pentagon evaluators of the Standoff Land Attack Missile, Expanded Response, the Navy's new long-range cruise missile, have declared it ``effective'' but not ``suitable'' after an operational evaluation. That means there has to be some production hardware and software changes before the air-launched weapon is approved for full-rate production, says Tom Laux, the Navy's deputy program executive for cruise missiles. However, low-rate production has been approved until the fixes are in place.
The U.S. Air Force is about to embark on system design for a new generation of highly secure communications satellites that would replace the current generation Milstar system around 2009. The Air Force last week awarded $22.25-million system design contracts to Lockheed Martin and Hughes for the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites. At the end of the 18-month design phase USAF will pick one company to develop and build the constellation.
Workers at Boeing's commercial aircraft factories in Seattle and Spokane, Wash., Portland, Ore., and Wichita, Kan., have threatened to strike later this week if negotiations for a new contract are unsuccessful.
A new, high-throughput air cargo distribution center designed to eliminate warehousing and reduce inventories is to be built at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. In a joint venture between AMB Property Corp., San Francisco, and Trammell Crow Co., Dallas, the two-level International Air Cargo Center II is intended chiefly to meet the needs of expedited cargo and e-commerce shippers, especially for time-sensitive, high-value and perishable cargoes. The 190,664-sq.-ft. facility, which features 30,000 sq. ft.
Boeing's CH-47SD ``Super D'' Chinook helicopter made its first flight on Aug. 25 piloted by Jack Jordan and Armand Barrieault, and made a second flight later that day. Changes in the Super D model include an integrated glass cockpit, automated flight controls and full-authority digital engine control. It will be the new standard CH-47 model, and first delivery is set for this autumn.
Boeing delivered 36 transports in July as the worker summer vacation period kicked in and crane problems slowed production at its Renton, Wash., narrow-body factory. The aerospace manufacturer delivered more than 50 new commercial transports a month in April, May and June and says it remains on track to roll about 620 out the door for the year. . . . In 1998, 60% of the flyaway costs of products produced by its Military Aircraft and Missile Systems group was procured from outside the company.
NASA has licensed a gyroscope to Hughes Space and Communications Co. that is 4 X 4 mm. in size and weighs less than 1 gram. The device, which relies on the measurement of vibrations, was jointly developed by Hughes and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a technology cooperation agreement that began in 1997. The high-performance microgyroscope is designed to operate in space for more than 15 years and have the capability of measuring extremely slow spacecraft movements.
Pratt&Whitney has been selected by the Israeli defense ministry to supply engines for that nation's recent buy of F-16C/Ds fighters, beginning in 2002. Israel plans to procure F100-PW-229 engines for a firm buy of 50 F-16s, and will have options on additional powerplants for another potential 60 aircraft. The Israeli engine decision is the first of several that are pending.
Work is underway on a new version of the Su-30K twin-seat multirole fighter for China, as well as on Su-30 and MiG-29 upgrade programs for the Russian air force. Industry officials at the recent Moscow air show here confirmed that the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Production Assn. (KnAAPO) is working on an order for perhaps 40 two-seat, non-thrust-vectoring Su-30MKK fighters, derivatives of the Su-27 aircraft originally bought by China. The first of the new aircraft made its first flight at the KnAAPO factory on Mar. 9.
Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Integrated Systems and Aerostructures Sector will build 55 replacement wings for U.S. Air Force T-38 Talon supersonic trainers. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2001. A new, redesigned wing under development by the company is to enter production in 2006 and will retrofit the entire 500-strong T-38 fleet. The Air Force plans to operate the Talon for the next 40 years.
Carnegie Mellon University has designed a solar sail that it hopes to see launched into space in 2001 as the only means of propulsion and attitude control for a satellite. Radiation pressure would let a satellite ride the solar wind. Four long blades give CMU's Solar Blade Heliogyro Nanosatellite the appearance of a Dutch windmill. Each blade will be 20 meters long, 1 meter wide and made of aluminized Kapton sheet 8 microns thick. Battens of 80-micron-thick Kapton and edge-reinforcing Kevlar will add stiffness and give some tear-resistance.
The Global Positioning System satellites handled the Y2K-like ``end-of-week rollover'' without a hiccup (see p. 41). But the Defense Dept.'s Inspector General has a word of caution about the system's preparedness for the next big event--Y2K itself. The satellites are inherently Y2K-compliant because their algorithms do not use conventional dates and times. The IG is worried that the center on the ground that monitors the health of the satellites is not yet Y2K-compliant. Boeing is developing a new center that will be compliant, but it is not slated to be ready until Dec.
An offer by Toronto's Onex Corp. and American Airlines to acquire Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International and merge them into a single national airline attempts to solve a perennial dilemma for Canadian commercial aviation.
