Live coverage: Falcon 9 launch scrubbed

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with the Thaicom 8 communications satellite. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter

19:56

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk says the issue being analyzed during this evening's countdown was with the Falcon 9's second stage Merlin engine

"There was a tiny glitch in the motion of an upper stage engine actuator. Probably not a flight risk, but still worth investigating," Musk tweeted

19:41 SCRUB

SpaceX has called off tonight's launch attempt and reset liftoff for no earlier than Friday at approximately 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT).

19:36 T-minus 60 minutes

One hour away from launch. SpaceX has not provided any more update on the nature of the issue that caused the delay from the opening of tonight's window, or if the data review is complete and satisfactory.

Chilldown of the pad's liquid oxygen system has started.

19:02

The SpaceX launch team just adjusted the target launch time four minutes earlier to 7:36 p.m. EDT (2336 GMT).

18:59 New launch time

SpaceX has reset tonight's Falcon 9 launch for 7:40 p.m. EDT (2340 GMT), at the end of tonight's window, assuming the issues that caused the earlier delay are resolved.

18:51

SpaceX has not yet set a new launch time this evening. The countdown remains in a hold at this moment.

18:23

SpaceX says the countdown clock is holding because the "launch team (is) finalizing review of vehicle data and check outs."

18:19

DELAY. The Falcon 9 rocket will not lift off as scheduled at 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT). The countdown is holding, but officials have not disclosed the reason for the pause.

This evening's launch window extends to 7:40 p.m. EDT (2340 GMT).

18:17

Fueling of the Falcon 9 rocket should have started more than 10 minutes ago, but SpaceX has not confirmed the milestone.

18:17

Fueling of the Falcon 9 rocket should have started more than 10 minutes ago, but SpaceX has not confirmed the milestone yet.

17:59 Falcon 9 targets "supersynchronous" orbit

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will aim for an elongated "supersynchronous transfer orbit" on today's mission.

The Thaicom 8 satellite has a relatively light launch mass of 6,669 pounds (3,025 kilograms), according to its Bangkok-based owner.

The heavy-lifting capacity of the Falcon 9 allows the rocket to place it in an orbit with an apogee, or high point, of approximately 90,000 kilometers (nearly 56,000 miles) and a perigee, or low point, of 250 kilometers (124 miles), Thaicom tells Spaceflight Now.

17:52

T-minus 48 minutes. 

Coming up on several major milestones in the countdown, beginning with a poll of the launch team at T-minus 38 minutes and the start of propellant loading at T-minus 35 minutes.

17:38

SpaceX will attempt to land the 156-foot-tall first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket downrange aboard a recovery vessel, extending the company's experiments with rocket re-entry and reusability.

The drone ship, christened "Of Course I Still Love You," is positioned about 420 miles (680 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX says a successful landing is challenging on this mission because of the higher speed the rocket needs to reach with the Thaicom 8 communications satellite, which is heading toward an orbit with a high point thousands of miles above Earth.

"Following stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 will attempt an experimental landing on the 'Of Course I Still Love You' droneship," SpaceX said in a statement. "As with other missions going to geostationary orbits, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing challenging."

SpaceX successfully landed a rocket on the drone ship for the first time April 8 after a launch from Cape Canaveral with a Dragon supply ship. That mission went into low Earth orbit on the way to the International Space Station.

The Falcon 9's last launch May 6 ended with another successful landing at sea, with the booster surviving a scorching atmospheric re-entry after launching the JCSAT 14 communications satellite. That was the first Falcon 9 intact recovery on a geostationary mission.

The above photo of the drone ship was taken before a previous launch

17:17

The U.S. Air Force Eastern Range has finished hold-fire checks with the Falcon 9 rocket

The Falcon 9 countdown is significantly changed with the upgraded version of the rocket

While radio checks and flight termination system tests complete, fueling of the rocket with its propellant mixture of RP-1 rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen will not begin until about a half-hour before the launch, instead of at about T-minus 3 hours on earlier Falcon 9s.

The upgraded Falcon 9 consumes a chilled propellant mix that allows engineers to load additional fuel into the rocket. The cryogenic liquid oxygen is chilled closer to its freezing point, from minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 340 degrees, while the RP-1 fuel is cooled from a more standard room temperature of about 70 degrees Fahrenheit to 20 degrees, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The change essentially permits the volume of the Falcon 9 fuel tanks, which are also slightly enlarged on this launch, to hold more mass of propellant, giving the rocket more performance.

The Merlin engines on the first and second stages will also produce more thrust. At liftoff, the nine-engine first stage will generate 1.5 million pounds of thrust, up from 1.3 million force-pounds on the Falcon 9's previous version.

The second stage engine is also modified with a bigger nozzle, and the stage separation system includes a new pusher device to help guide the first stage as it is jettisoned, ensuring no recontact.

Taken together, the modifications allow the Falcon 9 to carry heavier satellites into orbit and still attempt booster landings on the coast or on an ocean-going barge. This afternoon's launch will target a landing on a barge 420 miles (680 kilometers) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

17:05

The SpaceX launch team reports they have completed checks of the Falcon 9 rocket's flight termination system, which would be used to destroy the rocket if it flew off course.

16:41

A check of all SpaceX launch team stations at T-minus 2 hours indicates all is ready to proceed with tonight's flight.

Checks of the rocket's propulsion system are in work, and there are no open issues being tracked at this point in the countdown. The launch pad has also been cleared for this afternoon's liftoff.

16:05

SpaceX's launch crew is evacuating the pad at Cape Canaveral as the countdown ticks toward liftoff at 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT).

The launch window extends for two hours.

The launch team is on console at the launch control center this evening to run the Falcon 9 through prelaunch tests at the Complex 40 launch pad, then begin fueling the two-stage booster with super-chilled kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants about 35 minutes before liftoff.

Forecasters predict favorable weather during this evening's launch window, with a 90 percent chance conditions will be acceptable for liftoff.

Mostly sunny are in the forecast. Winds will be from the east-northeast at 17 to 22 mph, and the temperature at launch time is forecast to be 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

16:00 Processing photos

Thai communications satellite is fastened to the top of SpaceX’s 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket for launch at 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT) Thursday.

See photos of the Falcon 9 rocket and Thaicom 8 satellite prepared for launch.

04:25 Launch timeline

The Falcon 9 rocket’s fifth flight of the year will take off from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, heaving the Thaicom 8 communications satellite into orbit on an easterly trajectory from Florida’s Space Coast.

It will take about 32 minutes to inject the approximately 6,800-pound (3,100-kilogram) spacecraft into a highly elliptical geostationary transfer orbit on the way to the satellite’s final perch 22,300 miles (35,700 kilometers) at 78.5 degrees east longitude over the equator.

See more details in this launch timeline.

03:48

SpaceX is counting down to the 25th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday at 5:40 p.m. EDT (2140 GMT). The commercial booster will haul up the Thaicom 8 television broadcasting satellite from Cape Canaveral and attempt another landing on SpaceX's recovery platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket will be making its fifth flight of the year, and second launch for Thaicom, a Bangkok-based satellite operator providing television broadcast and data services over the Asia-Pacific.

Thursday evening's liftoff is also the second Falcon 9 flight this month for SpaceX.

The weather outlook issued Wednesday by the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron indicates a 90 percent chance of acceptable conditions during the two-hour launch window.

http://spaceflightnow.com

Europe to launch experimental wingless space plane

100-minute test flight of unmanned car-sized vessel to help inform future design of reusable spacecraft

Europe is set to launch an experimental "space plane", a car-sized, wingless vessel whose 100-minute unmanned mission will inform the design of reusable spacecraft of the future.

The European Space Agency's two-tonne, five-metre-long Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) was scheduled to be blasted into space on a Vega rocket from a space pad in Kourou, French Guiana, at 13:00 GMT on Wednesday.

It will separate from the launcher about 18 minutes later, some 320km above Earth, and then climb to a height of about 450km before starting its descent at several times the speed of sound, recording valuable data along the way.

A parachute will deploy to slow the descent, and balloons will keep the craft afloat after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, where it will be recovered by a ship for analysis.

Re-entry is a major challenge for the aerospace industry - as illustrated when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere in February 2003, killing all seven crew.

Friction with the Earth's atmosphere slows the returning craft, but also heats the outside to scorching temperatures.

If the re-entry angle is too steep the craft will burn up, too shallow and it may bounce off the atmosphere or pierce through but completely miss its landing target.

"We are able to go [to space], we are able to stay in orbit, what we want to learn today is to close the loop, to return from orbit, and this is one of the most complex disciplines in space activity," IXV programme manager Giorgio Tumino told the AFP news agency.

Since NASA retired its Space Shuttle, Russia's Soyuz is the only spacecraft that can ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting International Space Station. Private company Space X's Dragon is the only re-entry cargo craft.

Boeing and SpaceX are developing reusable astronaut carriers for NASA, which is also working on the Orion craft it hopes will take humans to Mars. All are based on the capsule design.

"Today we have our astronauts flying in Russian capsules, if one day we want them with the capability to fly back with European technology, this is fundamental," Tumino said of the IXV mission.

http://www.aljazeera.com

Galileos 13 & 14 launch

Date

Tue, May 24 2016 5:28 AM ART — Tue, May 24 2016 10:40 AM ART

About

Live from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana: launch by Soyuz of the 13th and 14th Galileo satellites. Streaming begins at 10:28 CEST on 24 May for the launch at 10:48, returning at 14:23 to cover the satellites’ separation

  European Space Agency

Another pair of Galileo navigation satellites is scheduled for launch by a Soyuz rocket this 24 May from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, bringing the Galileo system a step closer to operational use. The European Commission asked ESA to speed up the deployment of the constellation and to increase it’s robustness for delivering initial services. A total of 12 satellites has been deployed into orbit during the last four years –six in the last year alone. This A&B Roll gives an overview of Galileo and shows Galileo 13 and 14 in preparation in Kourou. It includes an interview with Paul Verhoef, ESA Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities

http://www.esa.int/ESA

Next pair of Galileo navigation satellites encapsulated for launch

The next two Galileo satellites were encapsulated for next week’s launch Wednesday. Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Europe’s nearly $8 billion Galileo navigation system, an analog to the U.S. GPS satellite network, is hitting a stride in production and launches, with another two spacecraft encapsulated Wednesday inside the fairing of a Soyuz rocket for liftoff next week.

The two navigation satellites will become the 13th and 14th operational Galileo craft launched since 2011. With a successful launch May 24, the Galileo system will have received six new satellites since September 2015.

Technicians at the European-run space center in French Guiana enclosed the Galileo satellites and their Russian-built Fregat space tug inside their aerodynamic shield Wednesday, a day after the satellites were mounted side-by-side atop the Fregat.

Workers then adorned the fairing with traditional decals.

A Russian Soyuz-2.1b rocket is scheduled to roll out of its MIK integration building at the Guiana Space Center on Friday for a nearly 700-meter (2,300-foot) trip to the launch pad.

Ground crews will move a mobile service structure around the Soyuz rocket later Friday to add the launcher’s upper composite, comprising the Galileo satellites, Fregat stage and payload fairing.

Each Galileo spacecraft weighs about 715 kilograms, or 1,576 pounds, with a full tank of propellant.

Liftoff is scheduled for Tuesday at 0848:43 GMT (4:48:43 a.m. EDT; 5:48:43 a.m. French Guiana time) at an instantaneous launch opportunity.

Built by OHB of Germany with navigation instrumentation from Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., the Galileo spacecraft will be deployed nearly four hours after launch by the Fregat upper stage in an orbit 23,522 kilometers (14,615 miles) above Earth at an inclination of 57.4 degrees.

Nicknamed Danielè and Alizée after children who won a painting competition organized by the European Commission in 2011, the satellites will use their own power to descend a few hundred kilometers to enter the operational Galileo fleet.

The Galileo network is funded by the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, and supported by the European Space Agency.

When complete in 2020, signals from the Galileo system and the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation GPS satellites will be fully compatible, giving users better positioning and timing accuracy and an independent backup navigation service.

Next week’s launch will be managed by Arianespace, and it comes less than a month after the last Soyuz flight from French Guiana. The launch will mark the 15th Soyuz mission from the jungle spaceport in South America since 2011.

The mission will be the fourth of 12 launches planned by Arianespace this year across its fleet of Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega boosters.

More photos of the Galileo satellites’ encapsulation are posted below.

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin

Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin

http://www.esa.int

India readies reusable launch vehicle testbed for flight

Artist’s concept of India’s reusable launch vehicle demonstrator. Credit: ISRO

India’s space agency plans to boost a sleek winged prototype spacecraft into the upper atmosphere aboard a solid-fueled rocket early Monday on a short test flight that will end with a controlled, unpowered glide to a simulated runway landing in the Bay of Bengal.

The reduced-scale space plane features delta wings and angled tail fins, with an outward appearance resembling a mini-space shuttle like the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B orbiter.

Indian officials hope the testbed is a pathfinder for a future unmanned reusable launch vehicle that could take off like a rocket, deploy a satellite in orbit, and return to Earth and land on a runway.

Monday’s demo mission an early step in the development of such a launcher, which Indian officials say is likely 15 years from becoming operational.

The test vehicle will not reach space on Monday’s flight, but a rocket booster will accelerate the craft up to six times the speed of sound within 90 seconds after a vertical liftoff from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, India’s launch base on the country’s east coast.

The launch is scheduled for 0400 GMT (12 a.m. EDT) Monday, according to multiple Indian news reports.

After consuming its 9 metric tons (nearly 20,000 pounds) of pre-packed solid propellant, the booster will separate from the space plane as it coasts to a maximum altitude near 70 kilometers (43 miles).

Then the craft will pitch its nose up, allowing a heat shield on its belly to take the brunt of the high temperatures generated by the vehicle’s speedy descent back into the thick, lower layers of the atmosphere.

The technology pathfinder is instrumented with sensors to measure the pressures, temperatures and structural loads it encounters in flight.

The Indian Space Research Organization is leading the reusable launcher’s development.

The Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration program, or RLV-TD, includes a series of test flights designed “to evaluate various technologies, namely, hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air-breathing propulsion,” ISRO said on its website.

Monday’s mission, expected to last about 10 minutes from liftoff to splashdown, is known as the hypersonic flight experiment.

Its objective is to characterize the aero-thermal dynamics of the winged re-entry craft as it autonomously steers toward a predetermined point in the Bay of Bengal east of the launch site. Engineers will also test the performance of its heat shield, made of silica tiles and a carbon-carbon nose cap, much like the retired American space shuttle.

India spent at least $14 million and took five years developing the first flight model for the RLV-TD program, according to the NDTV television news network.

ISRO does not plan to recover the vehicle on the hypersonic flight experiment.

Future test flights include a landing experiment, a return flight experiment and a scramjet propulsion experiment, ISRO said.

An operational reusable launch vehicle based on the winged space plane design will be at least five times larger than the SUV-sized, 1,750-kilogram (3,858-pound) testbed slated to fly Monday.

The first model has no on-board engines, while a full-scale reusable launcher will have two stages, carry air-breathing engines, and have conventional rocket thrusters.

“The cost of access to space is the major deterrent in space exploration and space utilization,” ISRO said on its website. “A reusable launch vehicle is the unanimous solution to achieve low cost, reliable and on-demand space access.”

The European Space Agency tested a similar space plane called the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle last year, but it flew more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth and reached much faster speeds than India’s RLV-TD pathfinder.

A.S. Kiran Kumar, ISRO’s chairman, told the Hindu newspaper that the hypersonic flight experiment is “a very preliminary step” in the development of a reusable rocket.

“We have to go a long way,” he said, according to the Hindu. “But these are very essential steps we have to take.”

http://spaceflightnow.com

Reunión de Especialistas en Modelos Digitales de Elevación

REUNIÓN DE ESPECIALISTAS EN MODELOS DIGITALES DE ELEVACIÓN

El 11 de mayo de 2016 tuvo lugar en la sede de la Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) en Buenos Aires la “3ra Reunión sobre Modelos Digitales de Elevación (DEM)”, organizada en el marco de la Misión SAOCOM/SIASGE. Desde el año 2013 la CONAE promueve y convoca a participar en estas reuniones a instituciones nacionales, investigadores y especialistas en la temática, para responder a la necesidad de contar con modelos altimétricos de terreno de calidad sobre nuestro país.

Participaron en esta tercera reunión representantes del Centro de Inteligencia Geospacial del Ejército Argentino (CIG-ERA), del Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN), del Servicio Geológico Minero (SEGEMAR), de la Armada Argentina, Prefectura, de la Gendarmería Nacional, y representantes técnicos de organismos del gobierno nacional tales como la Agencia de Administración de Bienes del Estado (AABE), el Ministerio de Transporte, el Observatorio Nacional de Datos de Transporte (ONDaT), la Subsecretaría de Movilidad Urbana, la Subsecretaría de Planificación y Coordinación Territorial. El ámbito municipal estuvo representado por asistentes de la Municipalidad de Lanús, como así también el sector de investigación nacional, con la asistencia de profesionales de la Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos (UADER) y del Centro Nacional Patagónico (CENPAT), entre otras instituciones.

Este grupo técnico-científico tiene el objetivo de elaborar productos altimétricos obtenidos a partir de datos satelitales, y lograr su validación con metodologías universalmente aceptadas.

En contribución a esta labor, cabe destacar que los satélites de la Misión SAOCOM, integrante del Sistema Ítalo Argentino de Satélites para la Gestión de Emergencias (SIASGE), aportarán datos que permitirán elaborar productos altimétricos tales como imágenes de Radar de Apertura Sintética (SAR, por sus siglas en inglés) ortorectificadas, pares interferométricos, y modelos digitales de elevación (DEM), entre otros.

En particular, la Misión SAOCOM ha desarrollado ciertas aplicaciones utilizando técnicas muy novedosas, para elaborar productos satelitales muy específicos, tales como la detección de deformaciones pequeñas en la superficie del terreno, tomografía 3D del terreno, detección de cambios en ambientes urbanos y otros desarrollos, ya disponibles para su aplicación y uso por parte de la comunidad.

Como resultado de la tercera Reunión sobre Modelos Digitales de Elevación surgieron las siguientes iniciativas, para continuar con el avance en la temática

• Planificar captaciones en todo el país mediante los satélites del Sistema SIASGE, empezando por COSMO-SkyMed (actualmente en órbita) para generar modelos digitales de elevación de la mejor resolución posible, que sirvan como base altimétrica para cartografía.
• Analizar las posibilidades de colaboración en el procesamiento de datos para la realización de cartografía planimétrica digital en escala 1:25.000, a partir de información SAR satelital.
• Realizar una nueva campaña de mediciones altimétricas para finalizar la elaboración de la metodología de toma de “puntos de control”, para validación de los productos altimétricos, en particular los DEM.
• Elaborar conjuntamente un listado de aplicaciones de interés en base a las necesidades de la Argentina, para integrar al Anuncio de Oportunidad (AO) en Modelos Digitales de Elevación, que la CONAE tiene planificado lanzar a nivel nacional durante el segundo semestre del presente año, para la presentación de proyectos de desarrollo de metodologías y aplicaciones topográficas

http://www.conae.gov.ar

Boeing 'Starliner' Test Article Literally Coming Together | Video

The CST-100 Structural Test Article's upper and lower domes were combined to form the capsule recently at the Kennedy Space Center. Once completed the capsule will be shipped to Huntington Beach, California for testing 

http://www.space.com

Flying Boeing's 'Starliner' - New Simulators Teaching Astronauts | Video

Astronauts are being instructed on "part-task trainers" for the new CST-100 crew transport spacecraft being developed by Boeing. The training includes: launch, landing and docking to the International Space Station simulations. 

http://www.space.com

SpaceX flies Falcon 9 from Cape, lands on Atlantic ship

 James Dean, FLORIDA TODAY

SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Friday and, despite the odds, landed the first stage on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

May 6, 2016

A SpaceX hangar at Kennedy Space Center may soon feel a bit crowded with used rockets.

A third Falcon 9 booster is on its way there after sticking a landing early Friday on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, minutes after a 1:21 a.m. launch that delivered a Japanese communications satellite to orbit.

“Woohoo!!” CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the rocket's first stage touched down on a ship about 200 miles off the Florida coast. “May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar.”

The landing was SpaceX’s second at sea in less than a month, and followed a first booster landing in December on a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Last month’s feat, after several failed attempts, showed that it was possible to land on an unpiloted “drone ship” bobbing in the ocean.

But expectations Friday were low. SpaceX repeatedly said success was unlikely, while Musk offered even odds

The reason: The Falcon 9’s first stage would drop back to Earth “a lot faster and hotter than last time,” Musk said, because the mission was flying to a much higher orbit

About 10 minutes after liftoff, cameras on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” ship showed a brilliant flash as the booster descended into the picture with several engines blazing

Employees gathered to watch the launch at SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles groaned, thinking the flash signaled the crash that many expected

http://www.floridatoday.com

Airbus Helicopters delivers first H145M to the Royal Thai Navy

After the technical reception held successfully today, Airbus Helicopters has delivered the first two multipurpose light helicopters military H145M to the Royal Thai Navy. This release is an important milestone in the program H145M way to the final acceptance and commissioning in Thailand at the end of 2016.

At the ceremony in Donauwörth plant attended by a delegation of the Royal Thai Navy and CEO Airbus Helicopters of Germany, Wolfgang Schoder. "After the launch of H145M with delivery to the German Luftwaffe last year, we are now very proud to have the Royal Thai Navy as operator of the new H145M" said Wolfgang Schoder. 

The H145M is the military version of the civilian helicopter H145. Commissioned in the summer of 2014, it has recently reached the milestone of 15,000 flight hours. With a maximum takeoff weight of 3.7 tons, the H145M is suitable for a wide range of military operations, including naval missions, utility, reconnaissance, search and rescue, medical evacuation, and armed patrol. 

The H145M of the Royal Thai Navy are equipped with pylons support multipurpose, including fairings Aerodynamic, load hook, crane, HF system for search and rescue (SAR, for its acronym in English), weather radar, indoor tank system fuel for long distance and fixed provision for further modernization for future special operations. Both H145M remain in Germany until September 2016 for pilot training on Airbus Helicopters Training Academy in Manching. The delivery of the remaining three helicopters is scheduled for September 2016. Designed as genuine multipurpose military helicopter, the H145M offers a unique, capable of carrying out missions day and night, in bad weather and rough terrain platform. The wide range of mission equipment, depending on the configuration chosen by the customer, enhances the flexibility of the missions of military operators. 

The helicopter set Helionix® digital avionics - including four-axis autopilot developed by the company - is designed to relieve the workload of the crew, while offering high levels of security and an improved perception of the situation

The H145M is powered by two Turbomeca Arriel 2E, equipped with digital control engine full authority (FADEC, for its acronym in English). Its low noise footprint makes the H145 the quietest helicopter in its class. Family H145 helicopters proves his worth to military customers for many years. The German Federal Army (Bundeswehr), which is the H145M launch customer, has placed an order for 15 helicopters of this type in settings for special forces. The delivery of the third of these devices is expected within a few days

DC