Fiat Avio Research Articles

Carlyle cleared to acquire Avio and funds CMOS imaging

The Carlyle Group has been cleared to acquire Fiat Avio adding the manufacture of aero_engine components to the private equity group’s roster of defence businesses that include a stake in QinetiQ. It is thought that Carlyle will now push to acquire MTU, the aero_engine division of Daimler_Chrysler. Meantime Carlyle’s portfolio investment unit was lead, with Wasserstein Venture Capital in a $13.5m financing for SMaL Camera Technologies. This is a short news story only. Visit www.three-fives.com for the latest advanced semiconductor industry news.

Special purpose surface treatment machines for Fiat Avio

Special purpose surface treatment machines for Fiat Avio

A new generation of solid propellants for space launchers

The solid space propulsion looks to the future with enhanced requirements in terms of reduction of costs, increased performance, improved reliability and more friendly environmental impact. In this perspective, new generation of solid propellants is needed. The main industrial entities involved in the European solid space propulsion, Fiat Avio and SNPE, have been engaging for several years research activities for developing advanced propellants. From the obtained results it arises that some new propellant formulations, with reduced environmental impact and enhanced impulse, are ready to be used for industrialization in near term. Very improved configurations with new energetic materials, having zero emissions and more significant improvements of the impulse, are under investigation for their optimization. The obtained results allow to estimate their application in mid-far term. The paper is addressed to the discussion of the achieved results and the technical, process and safety concerns arisen from the use of new ingredients.

VEGA, a small launch vehicle

Several studies have been performed in Europe aiming to promote the full development of a small launch vehicle to put into orbit one ton class spacecrafts. But during the last ten years, the european workforce was mainly oriented towards the qualification of the heavy class ARIANE 5 launch vehicle.Then, due also to lack of visibility on this reduced segment of market, when comparing with the geosatcom market, no proposal was sufficiently attractive to get from the potentially interrested authorities a clear go-ahead, i.e. a financial committment. The situation is now rapidly evolving. Several european states, among them ITALY and FRANCE, are now convinced of the necessity of the availability of such a transportation system, an important argument to promote small missions, using small satellites. Application market will be mainly scientific experiments and earth observation; some telecommunications applications may be also envisaged such as placement of little LEO constellation satellites, or replacement after failure of big LEO constellation satellites. FIAT AVIO and AEROSPATIALE have proposed to their national agencies the development of such a small launch vehicle, named VEGA. The paper presents the story of the industrial proposal, and the present status of the project: Mission spectrum, technical definition, launch service and performance, target development plan and target recurring costs, as well as the industrial organisation for development, procurement, marketing and operations.