CHARLOTTE, N.C., 8 May 2012. Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. won a defense contract to provide processor subsystems for an airborne program. Curtiss-Wright Controls engineers are integrating the company’s rugged commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) processor boards, customer-supplied software, and a third-party payload into a custom, Curtiss-Wright chassis.

FALLS CHURCH, Va., 27 April 2012. DynCorp International won a NASA contract, potentially worth $176.9 million, to provide aircraft maintenance and operational support services at various locations, including Ellington Field at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston; NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; NASA facilities in El Paso, Texas, and Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.; and worldwide locations as required.

NASHUA, N.H., 25 April 2012. Join the staff of Avionics Intelligence for a free Webinar on meeting DO-178C objectives in avionics designs tomorrow, Thurs., 26 April at 11 am EDT.

WASHINGTON, 25 April 2012. Engineers at Northrop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach, Calif., and ATK in Magna, Utah, have completed the center section of the backplane structure that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

DULLES, Va., 19 April 2012. The U.S. Air Force has exercised an option order for a Minotaur I space launch vehicle from Orbital Sciences Corp. (NYSE:ORB) to support the ORS-3 “Enabler” mission for the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office of the Department of Defense.

WASHINGTON, 18 April 2012. NASA has released version 2.0 of its Open Government Plan, upgraded with open data sharing, open source development, and a variety of technology acceleration efforts.

NEW YORK, 12 April 2012. L-3 Communications (NYSE:LLL) in New York has entered into an agreement to acquire the civil aircraft simulation and training business of Thales Training & Simulation Ltd., with facilities in the U.K., France, Germany, and Australia.

NASHUA, N.H., 11 April 2012. The staff of PennWell’s Aerospace & Defense Group is proud to welcome Kelly Barker, the newest member of its growing team of professionals. Barker joins Avionics Intelligence (http://www.avionics-intelligence.com) and Avionics Europe (http://www.avionics-event.com) as a member of the burgeoning sales staff.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., 10 April 2012. NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC of Englewood, Colo., to launch the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-R and –S (GOES-R and GOES-S). The GOES-R and GOES-S spacecraft are scheduled to launch in Oct. 2015 and Feb. 2017, respectively, aboard Atlas V 541 rockets from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

SYRACUSE, N.Y., 10 April 2012. Anaren Inc. (Nasdaq:ANEN) won three contracts, which total more than $11.5 million, in follow-on orders for passive ranging subsystems to be deployed in airborne applications.

CHANUTE, Kan., 9 April 2012. Spirit AeroSystems Inc. (NYSE:SPR), a non-OEM designer and manufacturer of aerostructures for commercial aircraft, has formally opened a 55,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Chanute, Kan. Employees at the new facility will perform small aircraft sub-assembly bench work for Spirit work packages.

PHOENIX, 9 April 2012. ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq:ONNN), a supplier of silicon solutions for energy-efficient electronics, and the European Space Agency (ESA) are jointly developing High Accuracy Star Tracker 3 (HAS3). The next-generation complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor (CIS) is designed to be a 1280x1280-pixel, radiation-tolerant CMOS image sensor featuring low read noise and 14-bit performance.

WASHINGTON, 6 April 2012. Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) in Bethesda, Md., won from the U.S. Navy a five-year, $1.05 billion contract to provide more than 200 digital cockpits, integrated mission systems, and sensors for the Navy’s MH-60R Romeo and MH-60S Sierra helicopters, designed and manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn.

PHOENIX, 5 April 2012. “The availability of verification evidence and proven certifiability are key for [the avionics] market,” says Greg Rose, vice president of marketing and product management at DDC-I in Phoenix. DDC-I staff and solutions, including its Deos real-time operating system (RTOS) are laser focused at serving the DO-178 safety-critical avionics market, he says.  

LONDONDERRY, N.H., 3 April 2012. Vulcan Flex Circuit Corp. (VFCC), a division of Vulcan Electric Company and a provider of flexible circuits, rigid-flex circuits, and circuit assemblies to aerospace and defense customers, won a $2.7 million contract to deliver flexible circuits to L-3 Communications, Fuzing, and Ordnance Systems (L-3 FOS). The contract award supports a proximity fuze developed by the U.S. Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey and manufactured by L-3 FOS in Cincinnati, Ohio.

FORT WORTH, Texas, 2 April 2012. Lockheed Martin officials, confident that F-35 operations and support costs will be comparable to or lower than those of the seven legacy platforms it will replace, have issued a statement in response to the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s F-35 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR).

WASHINGTON, 2 April 2012. The Office of the Secretary of Defense issued the 2011 F-35 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) to update Congress on the total cost estimates to develop, build, operate, upgrade, and maintain all aspects of the F-35 program and its military support infrastructure for the next 55 years. The total estimated cost, including adjustments for anticipated inflation, is $1.113 trillion.

NEW DELHI, 2 April 2012. Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) is procuring components needed to build the Munitions Control Units (MCUs) for 126 Indian Air Force Jaguar Darin II attack aircraft. The MCU enables integration of modern weapons on legacy aircraft with little to no modifications to aircraft wiring and flight or stores management software. The compact MCU, able to be located in a weapons pylon or avionics bay of legacy aircraft, provides an interface between a legacy aircraft’s existing software and modern smart weapons.

MONTREAL, 30 March 2012. Aveos Fleet Performance Inc.--a maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) provider of airframe, component, engine, and maintenance solutions with facilities in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver—has filed for bankruptcy protection and closed. Company officials cite finances and relations with client Air Canada as reasons for the closure.