ISRO Indian Space Research Organization has awarded a $13.5-million contract to Alcatel Space to supply image data compressors and solid-state recorders for India's Earth observation program.
Iridium's lenders have given the troubled venture a waiver until Aug. 11 to meet financial covenants requiring specified levels of revenues and subscribers. Interest on the company's high-yield bonds is due July 15 but is subject to an automatic 30-day grace period. Over the next six weeks, Iridium will ``work with representatives of all of its creditors to reach an agreement in principle on financial restructuring,'' the company said on June 30.
Stung by external criticism and a scathing internal review of the AH-64A Apache attack helicopter experience in Albania, the Army leadership is now beginning to respond. Brig. Gen. Richard Cody, commander of Task Force Hawk, in an after-action memo on the Apache deployment, highlighted equipment, training and readiness problems. One problem the Army has tried to tackle is the need to fly with additional fuel tanks for deep-strike missions. Auxiliary fuel tanks are available that hold 230 gal., but they aren't crash-worthy and take up external mounts.
Tim Roels has been named vice president-product support and customer service of Galaxy Aerospace of Fort Worth. He succeeds Mike Wuebbling, who has been appointed vice president-service center operations. Roels was director of F-16 customer requirements for Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, also in Fort Worth.
Enaer has concluded an agreement with Dassault Aviation covering the production in Chile of airframe subassemblies for Falcon 900 and 2000 business jets.
NASA and Boeing are investigating why technicians here misaligned the 3,000-lb. FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer) when placing it atop its Delta II booster prior to the observatory's launch June 24. The spacecraft was launched safely and is operating normally. But the incident, coming in the wake of a series of launch failures, is another example of how human error can affect space operations.
J. Michael Allgood has been named vice president/chief financial officer of Emery Worldwide, Redwood City, Calif. He was CFO of PLM International of San Francisco.
Lockheed Martin is preparing to make the FAA an offer it may find hard to refuse for the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). The company would raise funds from private investors to provide the space segment for the worldwide augmentation of satellite navigation signals. In addition to GPS augmentation, it could provide broadcasts to increase the integrity of European Egnos and Galileo, Russian Glonass, and Japanese MTSAT signals. Lockheed Martin has taken the first step by filing an application for its ``Regional Positioning System'' proposal with the U.S.
SAirGroup has struck an agreement with the state-owned Transnet Group to acquire a 20% stake in South African Airways (SAA) for $230 million. The move will make SAirGroup's Swissair and its partners in the Qualiflyer Group the strongest alliance in Africa with more than 40% of the traffic between South Africa and Europe. SAA is Africa's largest carrier, with 50 aircraft. American Airlines was among the other bidders, as were Lufthansa and Singapore airlines who withdrew their bids before the deadline.
Finmeccanica/Alenia Aerospazio is hoping to increase its transport business by joining with Airbus Industrie as a full-fledged member. However, this is not expected to happen until the European consortium evolves into a stock company. Finmeccanica, a 47,700-employee aerospace/defense group, owns Alenia, Agusta and additional companies such as Ansaldo and Elsag. Finmeccanica, which is scheduled to be privatized soon, had about $6 billion in revenues last year, including 36% in aerospace and 19% in the defense market.
Lockheed Martin has created a new London-based subsidiary that combines in a single company all of its defense and commercial business interests in the U.K., worth more than $950 million annually. Lockheed Martin U.K. Ltd. will have nearly 800 employees, more than half of whom work at the company's government systems division in Portsmouth, England. The move is intended to support the more than 70 partnerships Lockheed Martin has within the U.K. and increase the company's capabilities in the areas of prime contracting and systems integration.
MSE Technology Applications of Butte, Mont., is developing a virtual deep space environment for modeling the performance of future space exploration propulsion technologies. The virtual tester uses computational fluid dynamics techniques and high-performance computers to simulate planned engine designs--such as magneto plasma dynamic thrusters--and measure their thrust and efficiency along with other performance characteristics, according to David Micheletti, advanced energy and aerospace programs manager.
UTMC MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS INC. has developed a low-cost family of 4-megabit static random access memories for spacecraft applications. The asynchronous SRAMs store 8-bit words in 512,000 memory locations. They are hardened to both total dose and charged-particle radiation exposure and, with some shielding, can operate in any space orbit. The SRAMs were designed specifically to be more cost-effective than traditional radiation-hardened, high-density memories for low-Earth-orbit and communication satellite payloads, according to the company.
High-ranking political and aerospace officials are planning a gala celebration in Moscow this month to fete FAA certification of the Il-96T--the first transport aircraft of Russian design to be type-approved by the agency--and to try to rekindle financial support for the beleaguered project.
USAF Maj. Gen. Marcelite J. Harris (Ret.) has been appointed site director for United Space Alliance operations at the NASA Kennedy Space Center. She was director of maintenance for USAF programs in the Office of the Air Force Chief of Staff.
Greg Antonichuk has become general manager of the Fairchild Aerospace Corp.'s Gen-Aero and Avsat fixed-based operations at San Antonio (Tex.) International Airport. Antonichuk was operations manager for ESSO Avitat, Richmond, British Columbia.
The Peruvian government has certificated LanPeru to operate as a domestic air carrier. Carrier officials said the new airline would begin daily services in early July from Lima to Cuzco and Ariquipa with two Boeing 737s. A majority of LanPeru's investors are Peruvian, but LanChile owns 49% of the carrier. Peru has been without a domestic carrier since AeroPeru declared bankruptcy earlier this year. Creditors have given AeroPeru until July 12 to develop a restructuring plan.
Continental Airlines has asked Boston-based SpeechWorks International, provider of speech recognition technology, to develop two telephone voice-automated systems--one for airline employees booking reservations and another allowing the general public access to arrival/departure information. An employee making a reservation would state time, date and point of departure, and the system would book the flight. A person wishing to check arrival/departure times would need only phone Continental and provide the necessary flight information.
An investigation of a failed ground test of the Mitsubishi H-2A first-stage engine for Japan's new H-2A launcher has turned up two problems--bad wiring and unexpected vibration in the engine nozzle. The June 1 ground test at the National Space Development Agency's Tanegashima launch facility shut down after 16 sec. into a planned 30-sec. burn (AW&ST June 14, p. 51). NASDA investigators said they discovered two wiring faults that prompted the automatic shutdown. That was good news as it meant Mitsubishi's engine redesign was not at fault.
Pat Abeln is now aviation director at El Paso (Tex.) International Airport. He was chief administrative officer of the Tucson (Ariz.) Airport Authority.
John Casani, chief engineer of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and former project manager of the Voyager and Galileo missions, has received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for organizing and leading JPL's ISO 9001 certification campaign. Receiving the Outstanding Leadership Medal were three project managers: Kenneth Atkins, Stardust; David Lehman, Deep Space 1;and John McNamee, Mars '98.
The first captive-carry flight of an X-34 test vehicle by its L-1011 carrier aircraft was cut short last week when a chase plane pilot noticed a vibration on two small fuselage skin panels located aft of the X-34. Program officials said aerodynamic wake from the mated X-34 apparently caused panel fasteners to come loose, allowing two panels on the right and left sides of the aircraft to vibrate--especially the panel on the right side of the fuselage.
Alaska Airlines is using en route segments and approaches developed under FAA's Required Navigation Performance criteria to increase the safety, reliability and efficiency of its flight operations in southeastern Alaska.
