Orbital Sciences Corp. and Ball Aerospace both predict growth in 2009 will be impacted by an expected downturn in U.S. government spending. In 2008 quarterly earnings posted on Feb. 19, OSC announced record revenues ($1.17 billion), operating earnings ($89.9 million), free cash flow and backlog. But pointing to the likelihood of a federal budget squeeze, OSC forecast flat growth for the year ahead. Ball Aerospace, in its 2008 results issued on Jan. 29, also reported higher operating earnings ($76.2 million), but declining sales ($746 million).
With video and telecom demand seemingly unaffected by the global financial crisis and satellite failures worsening an already tight capacity situation, fixed satellite service (FSS) operators are maintaining or even accelerating capital expenditure plans.
France’s Cilas has supplied 28 laser target designators to a NATO nation for use by forward advance controller units operating in Afghanistan and other foreign regions. The designators are interoperable with NATO, Russian and Chinese standard ammunitions and will be distributed through the organization’s maintenance and supply agency.
The U.S. Marine Corps has scheduled three public comment meetings on a proposed action to base up to 10 MV-22 squadrons (120 aircraft) on the West Coast to replace nine squadrons with 114 aircraft in California.
An extensive search-and-rescue effort succeeded in recovering all 18 people on a Super Puma helicopter that ditched in the North Sea 120 mi. east of Aberdeen, Scotland, on Feb. 18. The U.K. Maritime and Coastguard Agency at the Aberdeen (Scotland) Coastguard Maritime Rescue Coordination Center arranged the effort, which also invovled Royal Air Force Nimrods and Sea King helicopters.
Ryanair has launched inflight mobile phone service on 20 of its 170 aircraft, to measure interest in the offering, which includes voice and text services for mobile phones and PDAs.
Obituaries: Konrad Dannenberg, who witnessed the first space launch in 1942 as a rocket engineer in Nazi Germany and went on to help develop the Saturn V Moon rocket for NASA, died Feb. 16 in Huntsville, Ala. He was 96. One of the last surviving members of Wernher von Braun’s celebrated “Rocket Team” that came to the U.S. after World War II, Dannenberg was introduced to rocketry by Max Valier, a German pioneer in the field. Dannenberg studied diesel engineering at Hanover because he considered the fuel-injection systems applicable to rocket engines.
The Boeing-led Airborne Laser (ABL) team has accomplished long-duration, lethal-power ground firings of the megawatt-class weapon to tune the mixture of chemical fuels for maximum efficiency ahead of flight tests. The firings into an onboard calorimeter lasted up to 3 sec. A ballistic-missile shootdown test is planned for later this year.
Ken Durst (see photo) has been appointed Tulsa, Okla.-based vice president-line maintenance for American Airlines . He was managing director of line maintenance for American’s Southwest Div. Durst succeeds Danny Martinez, who has retired. Honors and Elections
In response to the fall of fuel prices, Japan’s All Nippon Airways has applied to the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport to lower its fuel surcharge on international flights from Apr. 1 to June 30. After the three-month period expires, the surcharge will be revised on the basis of the average market price of Singapore kerosene for the three months previous. The cost of jet fuel fell to an average of $64.22 per barrel from November 2008 to January 2009.
May I start by congratulating you on your recent election as president of the United States of America. It is not an overstatement to say that this presidential election was probably the most important in a generation, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe where the outcome was so eagerly awaited.
Eric Wunderlich, an environmental executive at NetJets Aviation, has been named chairman of the Environmental Committee of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Air Transportation Assn. He succeeds Traver Gruen-Kennedy of the DayJet Corp.
The first design drawings for the Airbus A320 passenger-to-freighter (P2F) conversion are soon to be released and key supplier decisions also loom as Airbus moves its latest cargo program closer to reality. Airbus plans to add two new freighters to its product family early next decade, with a goal of having the A320P2F certified by safety authorities in 2011, and the A321 to follow around a year later. The A320 would enter service in 2012, with launch customer AerCap. The Dutch leasing company last year agreed to convert 30 of its A320/A321s into freighters.
British and French naval experts are trying to determine how two nuclear-powered submarines, both carrying nuclear missiles, collided early in February and how to prevent a recurrence in the future. The Triomphant, the first of a new generation of French submarines designed to carry the M51 ballistic missile, was forced to return to home port after striking a submerged object. On Feb. 16 the French ministry confirmed that the Triomphant had collided with the HMS Vanguard, which also returned to base.
Controllers driving the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover will get some extra mileage in the coming weeks as it continues the search for silica deposits, following an apparently fortuitous wind that blew accumulated dust off its solar arrays earlier this month. Spirit’s operators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted a 30-watt-hour increase in Spirit’s power supply, which they believe is the result of lower dust accumulation on the arrays that generate the rover’s electricity. The increase gives Spirit about 240 watt-hours a day to work with, up from about 210.
Airworthiness authorities will sign off on final software changes late this week allowing operators to begin flying Aviation Partners Boeing (APB) blended winglets in commercial service on the Boeing 767-300ER.
Russia’s aerospace industry is scrambling to keep core development programs alive as large government cutbacks loom. After years of neglect in the 1990s, Russia has been trying to rebuild its flagging aerospace sector through a number of commercial products. But the country’s economy has been hit particularly hard by the global financial crisis, and government revenue has been severely reduced by steeply decreased oil prices.
Unmanned systems are getting an additional push at BAE Systems as the company tries to expand its business, even as it faces several critical program execution milestones this year.
Building an advanced active, electronically scanned array (AESA) that fits in both new and old F-16s is the next big program in the airborne radar world. Raytheon was first out of the chute with an array that the company contends can transmit huge imagery files as well as fire bursts of microwaves into enemy sensors to jam and otherwise confuse them.
Decisions about which Pentagon programs will be cut in Fiscal 2010 are expected to begin trickling out in March. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is having “increased engagement” with the military service chiefs on the matter, according to Geoff Morrell, his spokesman. Others describe intense weekend meetings. Gates has assembled teams to review eight areas: tactical aircraft, mobility, shipbuilding, network-centric capabilities, rotary-wing aircraft, missile defense, irregular warfare and the nuclear triad.
Thai Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan has approved the purchase of a further six Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighters in the coming five budget years. Thailand has already ordered six Gripen C/Ds.
The European Space Agency says it has been assured by Eurockot that the Rockot launch vehicle will be able to orbit ESA’s second Earth Explorer, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission during a three-month window starting in July. The first Earth Explorer, Goce, is due to be launched on Rockot on Mar. 16.
“. . . [The U.S.] is being out-communicated by a guy in a cave,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates (AW&ST Jan. 19, p. 49). How funny. Maybe that’s because the cave guy actually has a message and an audience, which is more than I can say for the aerospace CEO guest columnists whose inanities have graced your back pages since the election.
NASA’s Dawn asteroid probe is moving away from the Sun after flying within 341 mi. of the surface of Mars Feb. 17 for a gravity assist. The maneuver set up the 2,500-lb. spacecraft for another 27 months of ion thrusting before it reaches its first target—the asteroid Vesta—in August 2011. Launched in September 2007, the spacecraft also is scheduled to reach Ceres in 2015. The probe is designed to orbit both bodies, studying their vastly different compositions and other characteristics to gain more knowledge about how the Solar System evolved (AW&ST July 2, 2007, p.
