‘Philae’ to land on a comet

A human effort to roam in the atmosphere of earth through the use of scientific methods, engineering, and involvement of businesses is what is referred to as Aerospace. Businesses concerned with aerospace activities are caught up in the research and development, design, operation and organization of resources to manufacture aircrafts for certain purposes. Such an industry maybe under public or private influence but in most of the countries, considering the strategic nature of the industry, specially when used for defensive purposes, is supported by government for example NASA in USA which is backed up by massive government funds, however its activities are only limited to aeronautics, not national security. When integrated with defense, those categorized to be working under this industry are involved in making of defense goods, weaponry, water and aircrafts and information systems. The major market for this industry is government who buy products for military purposes or spacecraft for federal space programs. Demand for such products is driven by the possibility of warfare and airline traffic or the military budgets allocated for this purpose. It is estimated that global aerospace and defense manufacturing industry is worth 170 billion US$. Breakdown of the major market segments under this industry include airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) worth 17.5 billion in 2012, global rotorcraft market, reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) and global market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Trending news related in this industry is that European Space Agency’s aircraft has captured glimpses and sequential images of the comet it intends to land on this year. The comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko had a duster veil around its icy body, which the aircraft was able to capture. The images were captured with the help of Rosetta’s OSIRIS scientific imaging system. Though the heavenly body is 373 million miles from the sun; it has started to warm up the surface affecting the icy shield. Thus it is decided that the organization will land a robot probe named Philae this November, which will be the first landing, by any probe on comet. Though this aircraft was launched by the organization in 2004 but without the gravity assists of Earth and Mars, which it needed, it was pretty much useless. Now that it has provided this important information, it is said that the Ptolemy instrument team are eager to get down on the surface to start making measurements on the body of the comet itself.

Some major companies in competition include Boeing Company (BA) headquarter in Chicago, Honeywell International (HON) with an annual revenue of 31 billion$, which places it among the largest companies in the world, Lockheed Martin (LMT) with Aeronautic sales of 13.2 billion$ and General Dynamics with an annual revenue of 32 billion$. For the first half of 2011, net income increased 17% from $1.31 billion in 2010 to $1.53 billion of Boeing Company. An analysis of the net profit margin places General Dynamics in the lead position with a percentage of 8.09%, which is followed by Honeywell international of 6.01%, then LMT with 5.77% and BA with 5.15% in financial year 2010- for more information please visit Bidnessetc.com.