Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
BEIJING - A Long March 3A rocket boosted China's Chang'e 1 lunar mission into an initial Earth orbit of 205 by 50,930 kilometers (127 by 31,650 miles) from the Xichang launch center in Sichuan province on Oct. 24, three days after the end of the Communist Party's latest congress. If it can overcome such key challenges as tracking and control in deep space, Chang'e 1 will open the way for Chinese scientists to move on to their next moon shot - the launch of a rover as early as 2012.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is seeking applications for commercial use of its Kibo section of the International Space Station, due to be launched in three shuttle missions starting in February. In doing so, it is trying to overcome corporate reluctance to commit spending on projects that would be done in a facility that has been delayed repeatedly and still isn’t in orbit.
Coinciding with AVIATION WEEK’s MRO Asia Conference in Shanghai this week, the following four articles explore two themes in the business of Asian maintenance, repair and overhaul. One is expansion, especially in China: Executives interviewed for these reports all describe at least doubling of capacity or output, and SR Technics, which has previously kept its Asia-Pacific region operations small, is looking for a big Asian base. The second theme involves the intertwined issues of staff turnover, wages and productivity.
