Aviation

Secretive X-37B space plane lands after 2 years

A secretive military space plane landed Friday in California after nearly two years in space.

The unpiloted X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 12:24 p.m. ET, concluding a mission that launched from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 11, 2012. That’s 674 days.”The landing of OTV-3 marks a hallmark event for the program,” says an Air Force press release, quoting an unnamed X-37B program manager. “The mission is our longest to date and we’re pleased with the incremental progress we’ve seen in our testing of the reusable space plane.”The flight was the third by a Boeing-built X-37B since 2010, totaling 1,367 days.

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In low Earth orbit. It was the first repeat flight by one of the two reusable vehicles. The first mission lasted 224 days, the second 469 days.The experimental spacecraft — whose operations are expected to move to the Kennedy Space Center — are about a quarter the size of a space shuttle, measuring 29 feet long with a 15-foot wingspan and a payload bay the size of a pickup truck bed. They have launched atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. Run by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the program has taken over two former shuttle hangars at KSC, where renovations are expected to be completed by the end of this year. That would allow the vehicles to be processed near their launch site, with future landings possible on KSC’s 3-mile shuttle runway. Doors on one of the hangars, Orbiter Processing Facility-1, already brand the site as “Home of the X-37B.” The program’s budget and missions are classified.The Air Force says it is performing “risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.”The Secure World Foundation says there’s a good chance the space plane serves as a platform for testing sensors for intelligence collection, but no chance it is a weapon system, as some have speculated.

Report Courtesy : USA TODAY

Aviation

No More Jet Airways. Supreme Court Says “No Choice”, Orders Liquidation

Jet Airways was once one of India’s leading airlines, known for its service and extensive network. Founded in 1993, it served millions of passengers, connecting cities across India and international destinations.

However, since grounding its flights in April 2019, Jet Airways has struggled to navigate financial turbulence, leading to years of efforts to revive the airline and return it to the skies.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of Jet Airways, citing “no choice” but to take this decisive step after the resolution plan failed to meet creditor obligations. The court invoked its extraordinary powers under Article 142, which allows it to make orders for “complete justice” in any case, overriding previous tribunal rulings.

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The Jalan-Kalrock Consortium (JKC), which had won the bid to revive Jet, faced criticism for not fulfilling payment commitments to creditors, which included major banks like the State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank.

The Supreme Court’s ruling pointed to “peculiar and alarming” issues surrounding the resolution plan’s implementation, leading to its conclusion that liquidation was the only feasible outcome.

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Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, alongside Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, emphasized that while liquidation should be a last resort, it was necessary as the resolution plan was “no longer capable of implementation.”

In line with this decision, the court ordered that the ₹200 crore already infused by JKC be forfeited and directed the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in Mumbai to appoint a liquidator to oversee the process.

JKC, a partnership between Murari Jalan, a UAE-based Indian entrepreneur, and Florian Fritsch, a Jet shareholder through Kalrock Capital Partners Limited, had taken ownership of Jet Airways two years after it was grounded. The consortium’s inability to fulfill its financial obligations has now led to this final verdict, marking the end of an era for Jet Airways in India.