EGNOS V3 will offer improved and secure Civil Aviation Safety of Life services for the next decade over Europe
Programme will ensure a full continuity of service and will be the first operational SBAS using both GPS and Galileo
Airbus has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) as the prime contractor to develop EGNOS V3, the next generation of the European Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) planned to provide the aviation community with advanced Safety of Life services and new services to Maritime and Land users.
Developed by ESA on behalf of the European Commission and the European GNSS Agency (GSA), EGNOS V3 (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) will provide augmented operational Safety of Life services over Europe that improve the accuracy and availability of user positioning services from existing Global Navigation Satellite Systems (Galileo and GPS) and provides crucial integrity messages to EGNOS users with alerts within a few seconds in case of system degradation, consolidating EGNOS’ position as one of the leading edge GNSS Systems in the future.
EGNOS V3 will thus offer improved Safety of Life (SoL) services performances (where people’s lives are potentially at stake) over Europe to Civil Aviation community and new applications for Maritime or Land users, and will improve robustness against increasing security risks, in particular cyber-security risks.
EGNOS V3 will ensure a full continuity of service for the next decade and will be the first operational SBAS implementing the dual frequency and multi constellation world standard, with both GPS and Galileo, replacing EGNOS V2 which has been in operation since 2011.
“This programme is strategic for Airbus to strengthen our position in the Navigation field. The signature of this contract is the result of more than 5 years of intense team work and investment,” said Nicolas Chamussy, Head of Space Systems at Airbus. “With our Consortium, we bring a large pool of resources and experience in Europe covering the successful development of critical and secure ground segment. I am confident that we will make EGNOS V3 a success story.” As Prime contractor, Airbus will be leading a consortium with partners from France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. Airbus will be responsible for the development, integration, deployment and preparation of EGNOS V3 operations, the overall performance of the system and the Central Processing Facility which is the heart of the real time navigation algorithms.
During the 6.5 year contract, around 100 people and 20 subcontractors will work on delivering the EGNOS V3 system. In 2023, the single frequency version will be available to replace the current operational version and, 18 months later, the final version in dual frequency will be delivered.
EGNOS is composed of a large network of about 50 ground stations deployed over Europe, Africa and North America, two master control centres located near Rome and Madrid, and a System Operation Support Centre in Toulouse. EGNOS will also use geostationary satellites navigation payload.
Airbus to exhibit latest products, services, innovations in Singapore
Airbus will be the largest international exhibitor at the upcoming Singapore Airshow, showcasing a selection of its latest products, services and innovations in the commercial aircraft, defence, space and helicopter markets. The show takes place at the Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore, 6-11 February.
The highlight at the static display will be the new long-range A350-1000 widebody aircraft, which will stop at the show as part of a three-week demonstration tour around the Asia-Pacific region. Set to enter commercial service in the coming weeks, the A350-1000 is the larger version of the A350 XWB Family, which has been especially successful with airlines in Asia.
Also on display will be the game-changing A400M, the new-generation military airlifter which has proven its capabilities by playing a critical role in humanitarian operations around the world. The aircraft at the show is operated by the Royal Malaysian Air Force.
Completing the line-up will be two of the company’s most popular helicopters – the H130 and H135. These single and twin engine rotorcraft offer unrivalled efficiency in the light-medium category for a wide range of operations, including public utility, tourism and private or corporate transportation.
At the Airbus stand in the main exhibition hall [stand #J23] scale models of the A350-1000, A400M, AstroBus-XS satellite and H145 helicopter will be on display. The exhibit will also feature a full size mock-up of a section of the new A330neo Airspace cabin, as well as an area dedicated to the company’s growing Services business. This will include information about the Skywise data platform and the Hangar of the Future project to digitalise the MRO business.
Another section of the stand will be devoted to Innovations. On display will be a prototype of the Skyways autonomous parcel delivery drone, which is at an advanced stage of development in collaboration with partners in Singapore. Visitors will also be able to take a virtual reality tour experiencing the world of Airbus today and a glimpse of what the future may hold. Airbus will also organise several media briefings during the show covering the commercial, helicopter and military aircraft markets, the fast-growing MRO and services business and unmanned aerial systems.
F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 Super Hornet, P-8A Poseidon, CH-47 Chinook, AH-64 Apache, and unmanned systems on display
737 MAX, 787 and 777X airplane models on exhibit
New Boeing Global Services exhibit highlights products that drive lifecycle innovation and efficiency
CHICAGO, Jan. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] will showcase a wide range of products and services at this year's Singapore Airshow, Asia's largest aerospace and defense show, which runs Feb. 6-11. The scale of the company's presence at this year's show reflects the strong growth prospects and opportunities across its commercial, defense and services businesses in Asia-Pacific.
"Singapore is a global aviation hub and the headquarters for our Southeast Asia operations, where we have enjoyed 70 years of presence and partnership," said Skip Boyce, president, Boeing Southeast Asia. "As our product line-up and customer requirements continue to evolve, we are confident and committed to delivering enhanced capabilities to our customers while growing our regional presence."
The Asia-Pacific region is Boeing Commercial Airplanes' fastest growing market with a strong demand for both single and twin-aisle airplanes. In addition to models of the 737 MAX and 787 airplanes that have been delivered to numerous customers in the region, the Boeing exhibit will also showcase a model of the new 777X now in development and build.
Boeing Defense, Space & Security will have a robust line-up of Boeing and customer products on static display at the show. The Republic of Singapore Air Force will display the F-15SG multi-role fighter, and the CH-47 Chinook and AH-64 Apache helicopters. The U.S. Department of Defense will exhibit the P-8A Poseidon and the F/A-18 Super Hornet, alongside the Integrator unmanned aircraft system from Insitu. The Boeing exhibit will also include the Insitu ScanEagle, and the Wave Glider, an ocean surface robot with seabed-to-space autonomous capabilities from Liquid Robotics.
For the first time at the Singapore Airshow, there will be a Boeing Global Services (BGS) exhibit booth. Launched in 2017, Boeing Global Services is the company's newest business unit and is poised for growth through innovative services and support for regional commercial and defense systems throughout the entire lifecycle. Asia-Pacific is an important growth market for the services business with a strong emphasis on engineering, modifications, upgrades, maintenance, Boeing AnalytX, digital services and training. The Boeing Training and Professional Services campus in Changi, Singapore is Boeing's largest pilot, technician and crew training facility in Asia.
Boeing will hold a series of media briefings during the show, as listed below. Members of the media should check the briefing schedule daily at the show Media Center for the latest updates.
The A350-1000, the newest member of Airbus’ leading widebody family, has embarked on a three-week demonstration tour to the Middle East and Asia-Pacific region.
The demonstration tour follows the completion of a successful flight test campaign, which lasted less than one year and culminated in joint EASA and FAA type certifications, demonstrating the aircraft’s excellent design, performance and maturity. The A350-1000 tour comes ahead of the first customer delivery to Qatar Airways in the coming weeks.
During the tour, the A350-1000 flight test aircraft (MSN065) will visit 12 destinations to demonstrate the aircraft’s exclusive features to airlines. The itinerary will see it travel over 30,000 nautical miles / 55,500 kilometres, with stops in Doha, Muscat, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Hanoi, Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo and Manila.
The aircraft will stop for several days in Singapore, where it will be on static display from 6 to 8 February at the Singapore Airshow 2018.
MSN065 is one of three Airbus A350-1000 test aircraft and is equipped with a fully functional cabin (40 business class, 36 economy plus class and 219 comfort economy class seats). The demonstration flights will be operated by Airbus flight test crews.
The A350-1000 is the latest member of the A350 XWB Family, showing high level of commonality with the A350-900 with 95 percent common systems part numbers and the same Type Rating. As well as having a longer fuselage to accommodate 40 more passengers than the A350-900 (in a typical three-class configuration), the A350-1000 also features a modified wing trailing-edge, new six-wheel main landing gears and more powerful Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines. Along with the A350-900, the A350-1000 is shaping the future of air travel by offering unprecedented levels of efficiency and unrivalled comfort in its ‘Airspace’ cabin. With its additional capacity, the A350-1000 is perfectly tailored for some of the busiest long-haul routes. To date, 11 customers from five continents have placed orders for a total of 169 A350-1000s.
Follow the A350-1000 tour live on Twitter: @Airbus and #A350XWBTour
Update to research agreement will help Nissan develop the technology for prototype transportation services
LAS VEGAS – At CES 2018, Nissan North America, Inc., the U.S.-based subsidiary of Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., announced an agreement with NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley to collaborate on research and technology development for future autonomous mobility services, including a working demonstration in Silicon Valley. This update to the existing research collaboration between Nissan and NASA builds on previous success to define a new scope of activities into 2019.
Under the terms of the five-year research and development partnership, researchers from the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley and NASA Ames have been working together to advance autonomous vehicle systems. In January 2017, at CES in Las Vegas, Nissan introduced Nissan Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM), a new platform for managing fleets of autonomous vehicles, developed from NASA technology. This new phase in the joint collaboration will build on that success to further develop the technology and test the use of SAM for managing autonomous transportation services, ahead of public implementations.
"We built SAM from technology NASA developed for managing interplanetary rovers as they move around unpredictable landscapes," said Maarten Sierhuis, director of the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley. "Our goal is to deploy SAM to help third-party organizations safely integrate a fleet of autonomous vehicles in unpredictable urban environments, for example ride-hailing services, public transportation or logistics and delivery services. The final stage of our existing research agreement with NASA will bring us closer to that goal and test SAM in a working demonstration on public streets."
"One of NASA's strategic goals is to transfer the technology developed to advance NASA mission and program objectives to broader commercial and social applications," said Eugene Tu, Center Director, NASA Ames. "Using NASA's work in robotics to accelerate the deployment of autonomous mobility services is a perfect example of how the considerable work required to advance space exploration can also pioneer advances here on Earth."
The research collaboration with NASA is part of Nissan's roadmap for the technology and business evolution of the automotive industry, called Nissan Intelligent Mobility. This roadmap consists of three workstreams of inter-related innovations in autonomous drive (Intelligent Drive), electrification (Intelligent Power) and infrastructure technologies (Intelligent Integration). SAM represents a major milestone in Nissan Intelligent Integration, providing the infrastructure to safely and seamlessly integrate autonomous mobility services into existing urban environments.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have demonstrated how to create a super-strong aluminum alloy that rivals the strength of stainless steel, an advance with potential industrial applications.
“Most lightweight aluminum alloys are soft and have inherently low mechanical strength, which hinders more widespread industrial application,” said Xinghang Zhang, a professor in Purdue University’s School of Materials Engineering. “However, high-strength, lightweight aluminum alloys with strength comparable to stainless steels would revolutionize the automobile and aerospace industries.”
New research shows how to alter the microstructure of aluminum to impart greater strength and ductility. Findings were detailed in two new research papers. The work was led by a team of researchers that included Purdue postdoctoral research associate Sichuang Xue and doctoral student Qiang Li.
The most recent paper was published online Jan. 22 in the journal Advanced Materials. The earlier paper was published in November in the journal Nature Communications.
The new high-strength aluminum is made possible by introducing “stacking faults,” or distortions in the crystal structure. While these are easy to produce in metals such as copper and silver, they are difficult to introduce in aluminum because of its high “stacking fault energy.”
A metal’s crystal lattice is made up of a repeating sequence of atomic layers. If one layer is missing, there is said to be a stacking fault. Meanwhile, so-called “twin boundaries” consisting of two layers of stacking faults can form. One type of stacking fault, called a 9R phase, is particularly promising, Zhang said.
“It has been shown that twin boundaries are difficult to be introduced into aluminum. The formation of the 9R phase in aluminum is even more difficult because of its high stacking fault energy,” Zhang said. “You want to introduce both nanotwins and 9R phase in nanograined aluminum to increase strength and ductility and improve thermal stability.” (A YouTube video is available at https://youtu.be/Y3dYq-N4xSY)
Now, researchers have learned how to readily achieve this 9R phase and nanotwins in aluminum.
“These results show how to fabricate aluminum alloys that are comparable to, or even stronger than, stainless steels,” he said. “There is a lot of potential commercial impact in this finding.”
Xue is lead author of the Nature Communications paper, which is the first to report a “shock-induced” 9R phase in aluminum. Researchers bombarded ultrathin aluminum films with tiny micro-projectiles of silicon dioxide, yielding 9R phase.
“Here, by using a laser-induced projectile impact testing technique, we discover a deformation-induced 9R phase with tens of nanometers in width,” Xue said.
The microprojectile tests were performed by a research group at Rice University, led by professor Edwin L. Thomas, a co-author of the Nature Communications paper. A laser beam causes the particles to be ejected at a velocity of 600 meters per second. The procedure dramatically accelerates screening tests of various alloys for impact-resistance applications.
“Say I want to screen many materials within a short time,” Zhang said. “This method allows us to do that at far lower cost than otherwise possible.”
Li is lead author of the Advanced Materials paper, which describes how to induce a 9R phase in aluminum not by shock but by introducing iron atoms into aluminum’s crystal structure via a procedure called magnetron sputtering. Iron also can be introduced into aluminum using other techniques, such as casting, and the new finding could potentially be scaled up for industrial applications.
The resulting “nanotwinned” aluminum-iron alloy coatings proved to be one of the strongest aluminum alloys ever created, comparable to high-strength steels.
“Molecular-dynamics simulations, performed by professor Jian Wang’s group at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, showed the 9R phase and nanograins result in high strength and work-hardening ability and revealed the formation mechanisms of the 9R phase in aluminum,” Zhang said. “Understand new deformation mechanisms will help us design new high strength, ductile metallic materials, such as aluminum alloys.”
One potential application might be to design wear- and corrosion-resistant aluminum alloy coatings for the electronics and automobile industries.
The research was mainly funded by U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering Division. The researchers have filed a patent application through the Purdue Research Foundation’s Office of Technology Commercialization.
The transmission electron microscopy work for the research was supported by a new FEI Talos 200X microscope facility directed by Haiyan Wang, Purdue’s Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering; and the “in situ micropillar compression” work in scanning electron microscopes was supported by Purdue’s Life Science Microscopy Facility, led by Christopher J. Gilpin, director of the facility. These advanced microscopy facilities were made possible with support from Purdue’s Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships.
The team included researchers from Purdue’s School of Materials Engineering, Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University, the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, State Key Lab of Metal Matrix Composites, the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering at China University of Petroleum, California Institute of Technology, Louisiana State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A complete listing of co-authors is available in the abstracts.
Light-weight aluminum (Al) alloys have widespread applications. However, most Al alloys have inherently low mechanical strength. Nanotwins can induce high strength and ductility in metallic materials. Yet, introducing high-density growth twins into Al remains difficult due to its ultrahigh stacking-fault energy. In this study, it is shown that incorporating merely several atomic percent of Fe solutes into Al enables the formation of nanotwinned (nt) columnar grains with high-density 9R phase in Al(Fe) solid solutions. The nt Al–Fe alloy coatings reach a maximum hardness of ≈5.5 GPa, one of the strongest binary Al alloys ever created. In situ uniaxial compressions show that the nt Al–Fe alloys populated with 9R phase have flow stress exceeding 1.5 GPa, comparable to high-strength steels. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that high strength and hardening ability of Al–Fe alloys arise mainly from the high-density 9R phase and nanoscale grain sizes.
