viernes, 20 de abril de 2012

Eurocopter South East Asia commences training on its Dauphin AS365 N3/N3+ Full Flight Simulator with launch customers from Asia Pacific and Middle East



  • Eurocopter South East Asia received bookings from five customers from the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions for its duly certified Dauphin AS365 N3/N3+ Full Flight Simulator, which commenced operations in early April 2012 at the Eurocopter South East Asia Training Centre located in Singapore.

In line with Eurocopter's Vision 2020 to develop worldwide training capabilities, the Dauphin AS365 N3/N3+ Full Flight Simulator (FFS) has been set up in Singapore, managed and operated by Eurocopter's South East Asian subsidiary. Mainly targeted at Dauphin pilots in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, the FFS is also open to other regions such as North and South America. The first bookings have been received from five customers, with a total of 38 pilots coming from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Korea and the United Arab Emirates. The first batch of trainees arrived in early April, and around 100 pilots are expected to be trained this year. An annual target of 3,000 FFS training hours is expected to be achieved in four years' time.

"Safety has always been a top priority for Eurocopter. This Full Flight Simulator will provide Dauphin pilots with high quality training in a completely safe environment," said Bernhard Brenner, President & CEO of Eurocopter South East Asia. "With the FFS located in a strategic location like Singapore, we will be able to provide our customers, as well as customers of other Eurocopter subsidiaries, with specialized training services at shorter turnaround times and lower costs as well." The Dauphin AS365N3/N3+ FFS achieved the FFS level B and FTD level 3 dual certification from the French Civil Aviation Authority in accordance with the European JAR/EASA criteria. This dual certification concept has been selected by Eurocopter as the optimal balance between high quality training and a reasonable price per flight hour.

The FFS will allow operators to perform initial and recurrent type training as well as specific training covering emergency procedures, instrument flight rules (IFR), offshore and search and rescue (SAR) operations, night flights (night vision goggles), flights over mountainous regions and low altitude navigation. Designed to meet operators' current and future expectations, the FFS features a full Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) simulation data-package, which provides the highest realism in flight loop, engine and autopilot models and ensures close reproduction of helicopter behavior. Incorporating advanced reconfigurable cockpit concept, both conventional and glass cockpit instrument panel layouts are available. The Dauphin AS365N3/N3+ FFS at ESEA TC is Eurocopter's 17th FFS around the world – part of Eurocopter's global strategy to deploy training capabilities in its network of subsidiaries in order to provide proximity services to its customers.

About Eurocopter

Established in 1992, the Franco-German-Spanish Eurocopter Group is a division of EADS, a world leader in aerospace and defense-related services. The Eurocopter Group employs approximately 20,000 people. In 2011, Eurocopter confirmed its position as the world's number one helicopter manufacturer with a turnover of 5.4 billion Euros, orders for 457 new helicopters and a 43 percent market share in the civil and parapublic sectors. Overall, the Group's helicopters account for 33 percent of the worldwide civil and parapublic fleet. Eurocopter's strong international presence is ensured by its subsidiaries and participations in 21 countries. Eurocopter's worldwide network of service centers, training facilities, distributors and certified agents supports some 2,900 customers. There are currently more than 11,300 Eurocopter helicopters in service in 149 countries. Eurocopter offers the most comprehensive civil and military helicopter range in the world and is fully committed to safety as the most important aspect of its business.

www.eurocopter.com

About Eurocopter South East Asia

Eurocopter South East Asia (ESEA) is the Regional Headquarters of Eurocopter, the world's leading helicopter manufacturer. Established in 1977 in Singapore, ESEA is the training and technical hub, and handles sales and customer support activities of 15 territories in total. In 2011, ESEA achieved a turnover of 135 million Euros. With a staff-strength of more than 200 professionals, the company has developed a successful commercial network of Singapore-based sales team and regional sales managers and technical representatives, servicing and maintaining more than 300 helicopters in the region.

www.eurocoptersea.com.sg

CarbonSat – On the trail of greenhouse gases



  • Astrium is designing a new climate satellite for ESA
  • CarbonSat project builds on experience gained with Sciamachy
  • Decision on new environmental satellites will be taken in 2013

Astrium, Europe's leading space company, will be pushing ahead with the preparation of CarbonSat, a new climate satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA), over the next 22 months. In early April 2012, ESA announced its decision to award Astrium a contract to define the CarbonSat satellite.

Under Astrium's lead, an international team of engineers will move forward consolidating the various components that make up the CarbonSat satellite. CarbonSat will measure the global concentration and distribution of the two most important greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) – with unprecedented accuracy, providing climate scientists with essential data for climate analysis and for refining climate simulation computer models.

Carbon dioxide and methane are the two main greenhouse gases causing global climate change. Comprehensive knowledge of the sources and global distribution of these gases is a pre-requisite for predicting the Earth's climate.

CarbonSat will provide measurement data with a spatial resolution better than 2x2km. For the first time, this should enable scientists to quantify localised sources of CO2 such as coal-fired power plants and emissions from cities as well as geological sources such as volcanoes. The mission will have the capability to achieve similar results for methane by quantifying emissions from sources such as landfill sites and large oil processing complexes, as well as supplying data on the little-researched issue of methane emissions from the world's oceans.

CarbonSat will provide the first exhaustive surveys of small-scale sources of emissions around the globe, thereby making a significant contribution towards our ability to distinguish between natural emissions and those arising from human activity. The CarbonSat climate satellite will therefore also have an important role to play in the context of the international climate deals signed in Kyoto and Copenhagen.

CarbonSat is vying to be the eighth Earth Explorer mission of ESA's Earth observation programme. It is designed to continue the process of tracking greenhouse gases from space initiated by the Envisat satellite´s Sciamachy spectrometer developed by Astrium.

As a leading satellite system specialist, Astrium has extensive expertise and operational mission experience in the field of environmental and climate satellites. Astrium was the prime contractor for Europe's largest environmental satellite, Envisat, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on 1 March this year. In addition, Astrium is also the prime contractor for four of the six ESA Earth Explorer missions – Cryosat-2, Swarm, Aeolus and EarthCARE – as well as playing a major role in the other two missions, GOCE and SMOS. Astrium is also studying the MicroCarb mission for CNES, French space agency, with the aim to assess CO2 fluxes between carbon sources and sinks and improve our knowledge of carbon sinks.
You can download a picture of the Carbonsat satellite on our website:

http://www.astrium.eads.net/media/image/carbonsat_satellite_artist_view.jpg, Copyright : Astrium / 2012

Do you want to know more about the role of Astrium in Earth protection? Follow the link:

http://www.astrium.eads.net/en/dossiers/planet-earth-handle-with-care.html

About Astrium

Astrium is the number one company in Europe for space technologies and the third in the world. In 2011, Astrium had a turnover close to €5 billion and 18,000 employees worldwide, mainly in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands

Astrium is the sole European company that covers the whole range of civil and defence space systems and services.

Its three business units are: Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure; Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment; Astrium Services for comprehensive fixed and mobile end-to-end solutions covering secure and commercial satcoms and networks, high security and broadcast satellite communications equipment and systems, and bespoke geo-information services, worldwide.

Astrium is a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2011, the Group – comprising Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter – generated revenues of € 49.1 billion and employed a workforce of over 133,000.


Inbiotec León, inmerso en un proyecto europeo para inhibir la corrosión en superficies metálicas

Podría suponer el ahorro de 600.000 millones de euros al año en mantenimiento de infraestructuras.


El problema de la corrosión supone un gasto de unos 1,32 billones de euros anuales, lo que supone entre el tres y el cuatro por ciento del Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) de los países industrializados. Nueve empresas europeas, entre las que se encuentra Inbiotec León, están inmersos en un proyecto para inhibirla.

Estudiantes de la UPM diseñan el submarino NO TRIPULADO del futuro

Participará en la competición internacional RoboSub 2012, que reunirá en California a universitarios de todo el mundo ante el reto de diseñar el más sofisticado robot submarino autónomo.

"Isaac Peral y Caballero" es el nombre con el que ya se conoce al submarino diseñado por los estudiantes de la Asociación Future Vehicles and Entrepeneurs (FuVe-E), que integran el único equipo español participante en RoboSub 2012. Esta competición de robótica submarina reunirá a universitarios de todo el mundo en San Diego, California, durante el mes de julio.

Organizada por la Fundación AUVSI (Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International), esta competición internacional plantea a los estudiantes el reto de construir un robot complejo, capaz de realizar con autonomía una misión de reconocimiento, localización, ataque y salvamento en las instalaciones de la Marina Norteamericana de San Diego.

Por primera vez, un equipo español participa en este certamen en el que instituciones como la University of Toronto (Canadá), Cornell University, Virginia Tech (EEUU), Kyushu Institute of Technology (Japón) o el National Institute of Ocean Technology (India), también experimentarán sus proyectos.
¿Cómo es Isaac Peral y Caballero?

El prototipo español, "Isaac Peral y Caballero", es un submarino de inteligencia artificial, caracterizado por ser un vehículo autónomo no tripulado y de misión programable. Gracias a su autonomía, podrá realizar tareas como la manipulación de objetos, reconocimiento de fondos marinos, guía o lanzamiento de munición.
Contará con dos lanzaderas de torpedos inteligentes, brazos robóticos para el rescate de objetos del fondo marino y, en la parte frontal, tendrá cámaras estereoscópicas para el control de la misión, junto a una serie de sensores pasivos y visión artificial.

El trabajo de construcción se ha repartido entre diferentes grupos, que según los casos se han responsabilizado en casco y propulsión, fabricación, logística, electrónica y sensores,software, administración, relaciones públicas y web y multimedia. FuVe-E, el equipo español, está finalizando la fase de construcción del submarino y cuenta con el patrocinio de numerosas empresas e instituciones como SAES (Sociedad Anónima de Electrónica Submarina), Cátedra Isdefe, ETSI Navales y la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Würth, Xilinx, RS o Dassault Systems, que ya han decidido respaldar a  estos jóvenes emprendedores.

La asociación FuVe-E se creó en la ETSI Navales de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid(UPM). Hoy en día integra a más de 40 estudiantes de diferentes universidades y nacionalidades que, desde esta Escuela de la UPM, trabajan durante meses para llevar a cabo su primer gran proyecto: la construcción de un prototipo de submarino autónomo capaz de explorar los océanos del planeta.

Otras universidades participantes del equipo son la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, UNED, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos y Cranfield University.

Más información: www.fuve-e.es