LORAL CORP. ANNOUNCED a joint venture to build, launch and operate communications satellites to serve the Russian market. The new partnership will manufacture and sell geosynchronous and highly elliptical satellites. Space Systems/Loral will build the communications payloads, and Russia's RSC Energia will supply the buses for the spacecraft. RJSC Gasprom, a Russian company that produces almost 25% of the world's natural gas, is also involved in the partnership.
McDonnell Douglas has selected Rockwell Collins to supply a GPS module to improve the accuracy of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a guidance kit that converts free-falling Mk. 84, BLU-109 and BLU-110 bombs into precision-guided ``smart'' munitions. Integrating GPS with an inertial measurement unit will give a munition 13-meter accuracy, according to Collins. The JDAM unit will be a modification of an earlier embedded module (below).
A USAF airborne laser radar (lidar) system that produces near-real-time three-dimensional wind profiles will be field tested this year to further verify the system's contribution to improved accuracy of air drops and fire demonstrations. The lidar system, developed at the USAF Wright Laboratory here, could be applied to aircraft operations as diverse as the AC-130H Talon gunship, the C-130, C-141 and C-17 transports, and to B-52s.
THE PHILIPPINE DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION intends to install GPS satellite landing systems at three airports. Under a memorandum of understanding, the first Philippine installation of a Honeywell/Pelorus Satellite Landing System, SLS-2000, is slated for fall. The SLS-2000 uses differential GPS, comparing satellite signals with those from receivers at surveyed ground locations to achieve accuracies of 1.5 meters horizontally and 2 meters vertically, according to Honeywell. One system can serve all runway ends within a radius of 20-30 naut. mi.
A QUALIFICATION MAIN ENGINE for the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn has passed a critical 200-min. ground firing test, which included operation of the system's gimbal actuators, according to program officials. Dual redundant engines will be mounted side by side at the base of the Cassini orbiter for use during course corrections and a firing of about 90 min. to place the spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Cassini is to arrive at the ringed planet in 2004 following launch in October, 1997.
EVANS&SUTHERLAND COMPUTER CORP. intends to purchase Terabit Computer Specialty Co., adding a cockpit capability to its high-performance ``out the window'' image generation for simulators. Terabit supplies simulated cockpit instruments and other aircraft electronic displays for use in training devices.
NASA and aerospace industry scientists are seriously discussing the technologies and capabilities needed to perform a successful Mars sample-return mission early in the next century. Although a formal program does not exist yet, the scientific community is initiating studies aimed at sending a sampling probe to the planet around 2005. A workshop at Ames Research Center next month will address key technology issues and how to perform such a mission within fiscal constraints inherent in the agency's ``faster, better, cheaper'' approach.
Which Asian country will be the region's aerospace manufacturing powerhouse in 2020? Industrialists and marketing strategists, engineers and economists, are thoroughly divided. For each one who asserts, ``Japan, of course,'' another declares, ``It's got to be China.'' ``Japan has the strongest capability today and the story of the next 20 years is South Korea, China and Indonesia trying to catch up with Japan. In some areas they're going to succeed,'' predicts a U.S. transport manufacturing official.
An Airbus Industrie A310 recently completed additional cold-weather tests in Yakutsk, Russia. The European consortium validated operational procedures at ground temperatures as low as minus 54C with a Diamond Sakha aircraft (left) that had accumulated 6,000 flight hr. in airline service and featured no system modifications. The A310 was equipped with Pratt&Whitney PW4000 turbofan engines. The tests were conducted with the Commonwealth of Independent States' Interstate Aviation Committee-Aviation Register.
A ROCKWELL-LED TEAM IS SET TO DEMONSTRATE satellite-based air traffic management in Xi'an, China, on Mar. 17-19. The team, working under the auspices of the Northwest Region of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, will include Daimler-Benz Aerospace and Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques. The team's Chinese partner is the Research Institute of Navigation Technology, Xi'an.
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY'S ROYAL COLLEGE of Aeronautics has delivered a modified T4 Harrier, with complete full-authority fly-by-wire capability in the rear cockpit, to the U.K. Defense Research Agency. The vectored-thrust aircraft advanced control (VAAC) testbed, linked to the Ministry of Defense's Sea Harrier replacement and U.S./U.K. Joint Advanced Strike Technology programs, will examine control laws for reducing pilot workload and providing a data base for the design of short take-off/vertical landing aircraft.
MONTHS OF INFORMAL DISCUSSIONS BETWEEN U.S. and German officials preceded their agreement to begin formal negotiations later this month on an Open Skies-type air services pact. With agreement on a liberalizing framework for the formal talks in place, the sides hope a new accord can be reached expeditiously. Under the framework, current restrictions on the number and frequency of flights for U.S. and German airlines would be lifted, as would constraints on pricing and code-sharing. Although eight U.S.
THE PREMISE THAT THE U.S. MUST BE PREPARED to fight two wars simultaneously will get a thorough, but ``independent, nonpartisan examination [by a] big national commission,'' if Sen. Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.) and his congressional allies have their way. He believes that a thorough analysis is likely to begin this year and ultimately will show the U.S. needs to abandon a force designed to fight two ``major regional contingencies'' alone. He anticipates the U.S.
Flight testing is underway on an advanced control surface actuator installed in an F/A-18 systems research aircraft at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.
2Airbus Industrie's product range should be expanded to include a 500-600-seat long-range transport, according to the transport ministers of consortium member countries. The French, German and British officials agreed on the importance of the envisioned program, which is expected to be launched in the next two years.
Staying within a budget used to be something of a joke at NASA. In 1992, a congressional study found spacecraft development cost overruns averaging 75%. But today, under shrinking overall funding and Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's ``better, faster, cheaper'' regime, living within one's means is deadly serious business for NASA projects. So it's little surprise that the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (Near) has emerged as the poster child of the Discovery program before it has even left the ground.
Alenia Aeronautica and Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems have agreed to study an upgrade of the Italian manufacturer's G-222 twin-turboprop transport that would give it the cockpit and engines of the new C-130J Hercules.
Catic, the export arm of China's aviation industry, has completed fligh testing and is ready to export the Nanchang K-8 tandem-seat jet trainer, but the program is languishing because the Chinese government has not placed an order. The aircraft has been developed in cooperation with Pakistan, and the program has ``stabilized'' after initial flight problems. They included a collapsed nose wheel during landing at the 1992 Asian Aerospace exhibition, which helped prompt a three-year redevelopment exercise, according to Catic Vice President Ding Shiqing.
NASA officials have halted tests of Pratt&Whitney's new space-shuttle fuel pump until they can find the cause of a failure that nearly destroyed an advanced shuttle engine Jan. 25. Indications are that the failure began within the pump, according to Gerry Ladner, the shuttle main engine project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. ``We've got a design problem, we think,'' he said of the high-pressure fuel turbopump. ``We've got to go fix that before we can do more testing.''
DELTA AIR LINES AND AIR LINE PILOTS Assn. negotiators kicked off the latest round of talks on a new flight-crew contract in back-to-back meetings last week with a federal mediator attempting to break the stalemate in their 15-month bargaining effort. Airline and ALPA representatives met all last week in Washington under the supervision of Kenneth B. Hipp, a member of the U.S. National Mediation Board.
In a bit of backdoor boosterism at the expense of the nation's best-known airlines, Chinese aviation authorities are showing how much stock they are investing in the resurrection of an old family name. Nothing is official, but the Civil Aviation Administration of China has let the 16-member Orient Airlines Assn. know that China's three major airlines--Air China, China Southern and China Eastern--will not receive the CAAC's official blessing to join the OAA--at least not any time soon, OAA Director-General Richard Stirland said.
Military displays at Asian Aerospace '96 reflect the Asia/Pacific region's continued modernization of its militaries in radar and missile systems, fighters and trainers, transports and helicopters. With many Middle East nations taking a breather from new purchases in order to assimilate the equipment acquired in the buying spree after the Gulf war, the Far East has taken over as the most promising market for defense exporters.
Commercial remote sensing data from France's Spot Image are helping provide U.S. Air Force pilots with simulated 3-D imagery that allows them to conduct real-time practice ``flyovers'' of Bosnia. 20 The images were created by taking unclassified 10-meter Spot data and fusing them with high resolution digital elevation data and precise ground points provided by the Defense Mapping Agency.
The European Commission is pressing for a common policy to sustain and increase the competitiveness of its embattled defense industrial base, which is coming under increasing pressure from U.S. exports.
Wall Street is bullish on the profit out look for U.S. airlines in the first quarter, with Goldman, Sachs analyst Glenn Engel and some others expecting net earnings to exceed their current forecasts. Market professionals think Federal Reserve policy makers will be more aggressive in cutting interest rates than in the past and that airline management will monitor domestic traffic growth closely, keeping it at a modest 2-3%. The combination, a few say, should stimulate investor enthusiasm for airline stocks.
