The Lunar Lander Project Office at Johnson Space Center will spend as much as $30.1 million over the next five years buying data from companies trying to develop private lunar landers, including those vying for the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize (AW&ST Oct. 11, p. 37). NASA will use the data as it develops its own landers for human and robotic missions to the Moon. Among winners of the contracts are Astrobotic Technology Inc. of Pittsburgh; the Charles Stark Draper Lab of Cambridge, Mass.; Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Ala.; and Moon Express Inc.
Joe Hof has been named director-business development for global ATM operations at Metron Aviation , Dulles, Va. He was national operations manager of international operations at the FAA’s Control System Command Center.
Korean Air expects to take delivery of its first Airbus A380 next May and to have five in service by the end of 2011. The first aircraft was rolled out in Toulouse last week to await flight testing for systems checks.
Globalstar has launched the first six of 24 new-generation satellites intended to renew its low-Earth-orbit mobile satellite service network. The launch, on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by Arianespace affiliate Starsem, will be followed by three others next year under the $2-billion Globalstar 2 program, which is designed to extend the life of the network another 25 years.
A second attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile using the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser testbed failed on Oct. 21 when the system did not transition from tracking the target missile’s rocket plume to active tracking. The megawatt-class chemical laser was not fired, says the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The test objective was to destroy a solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile target—a Terrier Black Brandt sounding rocket—while its rocket motors were still thrusting. MDA says it is also investigating the “intermittent performance” of a valve in the laser system.
The U.S. Army is making strides in improving its intelligence-collection capability as anti-insurgency efforts intensify in Afghanistan. Two key programs are moving forward: The Enhanced Medium-Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (Emarss), optimized for real-time intelligence, and the Constant Hawk, a forensic intelligence-collector optimized to counter improvised explosive devices, which is managed by the Army’s Task Force ODIN.
Rockwell Collins is in the final stages of certifying its Pro Line Fusion avionics system, which is designed to enable corporate and air transport users to slot into a fully fledged U.S. NextGen or European Sesar performance-based air traffic environment.
Revenues at Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes (BCA) unit rose 11% in the third quarter from a year earlier, and the company recorded its highest order total since early 2008, providing fresh evidence that a recovery in demand for commercial jets is gaining momentum. BCA reported 221 net orders during the three months ended Sept. 30, well above the 151 taken during the two previous quarters combined and a vast improvement from the first half of 2009, when the company recorded just one net order.
British Airways will add two more steep-approach variants of Embraer’s E-190 twinjet to its BA CityFlyer fleet as part of an effort to expand the regional division’s London City Airport network.
USAF Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Sargeant has been appointed special assistant to the chief of safety at USAF Headquarters/commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. He was commander of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center at Kirtland. Sargeant has been succeeded by Maj. Gen. David J. Eichhorn, who was commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center of Air Force Materiel Command, Edwards AFB, Calif. Eichhorn, in turn, has been followed by Brig. Gen. Robert C. Nolan, 2nd, who was director of Standing Joint Force Headquarters of U.S.
A list of competing teams for the Next Generation Jammer was incomplete in a story headlined “Pod Predicament” (Oct. 11, p. 27). The two teams and two individual companies that have been awarded contracts for technology maturation are: BAE Systems/Cobham, ITT Corp./Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.
The Royal Australian Air Force has cleared its BAE Hawk lead-in fighters to resume operational flying, officials said Oct. 19. On Oct. 11 they said they had suspended all Hawk operations after one of the aircraft experienced a technical fault while taxiing prior to takeoff from RAAF Base Pearce, Western Australia.
John Rishton, chief executive of the Dutch retail group Royal Ahold, has been named to succeed John Rose as CEO of Rolls-Royce when Rose retires at the end of March. Rose joined the company in 1984 and became a board member in 1993 before being appointed to the top job.
Joe-Tao Zhou (see photo) has been promoted to president-Asia Pacific for the Shanghai-based Eaton Corp. Aerospace Group . Zhou joined Eaton in 2008 as country president for China and before that worked for Alcatel Lucent.
NASA’s vision of the future flight deck is an intelligent cockpit that forms an integral and interactive part of the airspace system. It will be aware of the aircraft, the crew operating it and the surrounding environment. It will sense hazards, evaluate them and provide timely and appropriate responses to the crew.
Cessna has unveiled a new version of its high-speed business jet, which is now labeled the Citation Ten. The upgraded aircraft will be the launch platform for the Garmin G5000 integrated cockpit, that firm’s first FAR25 installation.
Renee Allen has been named to receive NASA ’s Silver Snoopy award, which honors achievements related to flight safety or mission success. Allen is a criminal investigator for the Northrop Grumman-led joint venture Space Gateway Support at the Kennedy Space Center.
Systems that generate synthetic three-dimensional images of terrain on cockpit flight displays could allow pilots to fly down to lower weather minimums in reduced visibility than they currently can using unaided vision. Key to unlocking that potential could be finding the best way to combine the complementary strengths of the database-derived synthetic vision system (SVS) and real-time imagery-based enhanced-vision system (EVS).
Jeff Mihalic (see photo) has been appointed senior vice president-fixed wing maintenance, repair and overhaul at Greenwich AeroGroup , Greenwich, Conn. He has held senior positions with Bombardier Aerospace, QAviation and Boeing Commercial Aircraft. Allen Hoyt, president of subsidiary Western Aircraft, Boise, Idaho, will retire at month-end after nearly 30 years with the company.
As the U.S. Army weighs its options for an armed aerial scout and draws up plans for rotorcraft technology demonstrators, Sikorsky has jumped ahead of its competitors by announcing it will build two light tactical helicopter prototypes on company funds. The S-97 X2 Raider prototypes will incorporate technology from Sikorsky’s X2 high-speed coaxial-rotor helicopter demonstrator, which in September exceeded 250 kt. in level flight. The first aircraft is scheduled to fly in 48 months, and will be instrumented for experimental test flights.
On the same day that it announced a 23% drop in operating profit in its defense business amid shrinking margins, Boeing Co. received some good news. U.S. officials announced a $60-billion set of Foreign Military Sales to Saudi Arabia that includes updated Boeing F-15 fighter jets. “I would not characterize the prospects ahead of us in defense as wild-eyed growth, but I would suggest there is an opportunity to grow, with international [sales] and adjacent [markets] leading the way,” CEO James McNerney told Wall Street analysts.
Megan Rosia (see photo) has joined Pinnacle Airlines Corp. as Washington-based vice president of government affairs. She was assistant administrator for government and industry affairs for the FAA and for 12 years as chief regulatory attorney at Northwest Airlines. She was also a partner with Crowell & Moring in Washington.
Simon van den Dries has become vice president-global sales of EMS Global Tracking . He was head of commercial sales for General Electric’s GE Asset Intelligence unit in Europe. Honors and Elections Capt. Lee Moak has been elected president of Air Line Pilots Association International. He is a Delta Air Lines pilot and has been head of Delta’s pilot union since 2005.
In your article on another strategy for designing a laminar flow wing, there was considerable emphasis on the use of “discrete roughness elements” (DRE) to reduce the crossflow instability associated with swept wings (AW&ST Sept. 20/27, p. 61). The DRE are reported to be a few microns in height and the effectiveness depends on their distribution. Did the researchers measure the roughness of an airliner wing that has been in service for a few years? Is it possible that the DRE and their distribution might be swamped or contaminated by naturally occurring roughness?
