Cobham’s new 12-year, roughly $563 million contract to provide airborne search-and-rescue capability for Australia should add about 1% to the British-based company’s top line, RBC Capital Markets analysts said Oct. 24 after the deal was unveiled.
The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman a $207.3 million contract modification for procurement of four Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ator) low-rate initial production systems.
A spacecraft designed to test re-entry techniques for a future lunar-sample return mission lifted off from the Xichang launch facility on a Long March 3C on Oct. 23 (Oct. 24 local time) on a week-long mission that will take it around the Moon. Citing a spokesman for the China National Space Administration, China Daily’s English-language edition said the testbed will return to Earth after a swing around the Moon to test a “skip” re-entry technique pioneered by the Soviet Union to bleed off velocity before a parachute touchdown in the Gobi Desert.
With less than a year to the congressional deadline for safe integration of unmanned aircraft into national airspace, FAA efforts are gathering pace; but not fast enough to quell critics of the agency's belated progress.
