Few details about the merger are being disclosed, but if approved, it will create a company with more than 40,000 employees and operations to 115 destinations in 23 countries. The combined entity will be named LATAM Airlines Group, although the two companies will operate as separate brands.
BENGALURU, India - India's Defense Bioengineering and Electromedical Laboratory has developed an oxygen life-support system for helicopter pilots operating at high altitudes.
"There are concerns expressed by us time and again and we are watching the progress at the other end," one senior Indian Air Force official told AVIATION WEEK.
The June 9 test-stand fire that ruined one of the two rocket engines scheduled to power the first flight of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus II launch vehicle was caused by kerosene fuel leaking from a 40-year-old manifold manufactured in the former Soviet Union.
The flying of the space shuttle involves complex choreography of man (or woman) and machine. With five shuttle missions under his belt and a stint as the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson is among the most qualified to explain what must be done to make a flight a success. In an exclusive Aviation Week pilot report, he describes what transpires from launch through landing from the commander’s point of view.
The loss of two shuttle orbiters and 14 brave astronauts gave NASA and the nation several textbooks worth of painful lessons about launching humans into space, including how easy it is to forget those lessons. The Challenger accident scuttled forever the notion that the space shuttle was an operational vehicle that could take humans to orbit as a matter of “routine.” Columbia’s loss underscored that schooling, and killed the shuttle program.
As new competitors enter the commercial aircraft market, Boeing and Airbus face big decisions about how to keep their products on the leading edge. Should they make incremental upgrades now, or wait until game-changing technologies are ready? Boeing Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney sat down at the company’s Chicago headquarters with AW&ST Senior Business Editor Joseph C. Anselmo to discuss the options the company is mulling and why he thinks China will become the industry’s next big power.
Trials about to start on a small engine stand in rural Oxfordshire, England, could open the door to full-scale development of a hybrid air-breathing rocket engine for single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable launch vehicles.
The first images from the U.S. Air Force's new spacecborne strategic missile warning system are so far making good on the military's promise that they would surpass the quality provided by the decades-old Defense Support Program constellation.
The third time is anything but a charm for the Air Force, which has notified Congress--again--it needs more money for its next-generation missile early-warning system. Originally expected to cost about $4 billion, the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) High is now expected to total well beyond $10 billion. But needing more cash is not the only problem: Officials don't know just how much they need. The final amount is expected to be at least $1.5 billion, although officials say it could exceed $2.5 billion.
Restructuring in the U.S. satellite industry is generating new opportunities for fast-growing SES Global to mesh together its far-flung network of operating companies and to mold it into an efficient worldwide system.
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center plans to conduct follow-on testing of a wing design that achieved supersonic natural laminar flow over more than 80% of a test article during initial flights.
NASA/Boeing collaboration will demonstrate 41 advanced technologies for reusable launch vehicles NASA and Boeing's recent signing of a four-year agreement to build and fly a single X-37 reusable vehicle in orbit clears the way for demonstrating a wide range of technologies that eventually could cut the cost of accessing space from $10,000 to $1,000/lb.
The Paris-based Economic and Social Council plans to issue a report to the French government calling for closer integration of French and European space activities and in particular the creation of a new high-level European body to define common space strategy. The council is an independent organization that serves as a forum for discussion of public policy and a source of recommendations to the French government.
The appointment of a former U.S. Air Force chief of staff as board chairman of Pioneer RocketPlane Corp. is expected to accelerate financing and elevate the credibility of the start-up company's air-refuelable space launch vehicle program.
The launch of an advanced version of the KH-11 imaging reconnaissance satellite on a Titan 4 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., Dec. 20, completes a new three-spacecraft constellation that uses an uprated model of the optical spacecraft operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
The Russian Mars 96 mission with an orbiter, four landers and participants from more than 20 countries is scheduled to be en route to Mars this week after a tortuous eight-year development that spanned the collapse of the Soviet Union.
