2021 was a historic year for all-things space … from the success of private spaceflight companies to robots exploring Mars in a road trip for the ages. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi beams us through the Year in Space.
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The White Fox restaurant in Mosul, Iraq, isn’t known for its comfortable atmosphere or its great food and drinks. It’s known for its servers. VOA’s Kawa Omar filed this report, narrated by Rikar Hussein.

Producer and camera: Kawa Omar.
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“White-knuckle” — That’s how Rusty Whitman describes the month ahead, after the launch of the historic James Webb Space Telescope, now tentatively set for Saturday. 

From a secure control room in Baltimore, Maryland, Whitman and his colleagues will hold their breath as Webb comes online. But that’s just the beginning. 

For the first six months after Webb’s launch, Whitman and the team at the Space Telescope Science Institute will monitor the observatory around the clock, making tiny adjustments to ensure it is perfectly calibrated for astronomers across the world to explore the universe.

The most crucial moments will come at the beginning of the mission: the telescope must be placed on a precise trajectory, while at the same time unfurling its massive mirror and even larger sun-shade — a perilous choreography.   

“At the end of 30 days, I will be able to breathe a sigh of relief if we’re on schedule,” said Whitman, flight operations system engineering manager. 

He leads the team of technicians who set up Webb’s control room — a high-tech hub with dozens of screens to monitor and control the spacecraft. 

In the first row, one person alone will have the power to send commands to the $10 billion machine, which will eventually settle into an orbit over 1.5 million kilometers away. 

In other stations, engineers will monitor specific systems for any anomalies. 

After launch, Webb’s operations are largely automated, but the team in Baltimore must be ready to handle any unexpected issues.   

Luckily, they have had lots of practice. 

Over the course of a dozen simulations, the engineers practiced quickly diagnosing and correcting malfunctions thought up by the team, as well as experts flown in from Europe and California.   

During one of those tests, the power in the building cut out. 

“It was totally unexpected,” said Whitman. “The people who didn’t know — they thought it was part of the plan.” 

Fortunately, the team had already prepared for such an event: a back-up generator quickly restored power to the control room.   

Even with the practice, Whitman is still worried about what could go wrong: “I’m nervous about the possibility that we forgot something. I’m always trying to think ‘what did we forget?”

In addition to its job of keeping Webb up and running, the Space Telescope Science Institute — based out of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University — manages who gets to use the pricey science tool. 

While the telescope will operate practically 24/7, that only leaves 8,760 hours a year to divvy up among the scientists clamoring for their shot at a ground-breaking discovery. 

Black holes, exoplanets, star clusters — how to decide which exciting experiment gets priority? 

By the end of 2020, researchers from around the world submitted over 1,200 proposals, of which 400 were eventually chosen for the first year of operation. 

Hundreds of independent specialists met over two weeks in early 2021 — online due to the pandemic — to debate the proposals and pare down the list. 

The proposals were anonymized, a practice the Space Telescope Science Institute first put in place for another project it manages, the Hubble Telescope. As a result, many more projects by women and early-career scientists were chosen. 

“These are exactly the kind of people we want to use the observatory, because these are new ideas,” explained Klaus Pontoppidan, the science lead for Webb.   

The time each project requires for observations varies in length, some needing only a few hours and the longest needing about 200.   

What will be the first images revealed to the public? “I can’t say,” said Pontoppidan, “that is meant to be a surprise.” 

The early release of images and data will quickly allow scientists to understand the telescope’s capacities and set up systems that work in lock step.    

“We want them to be able to do their science with it quickly,” Pontoppidan explained. “Then they can come back and say ‘hey – we need to do more observations based on the data we already have.'” 

Pontoppidan, himself an astronomer, believes Webb will lead to many discoveries “far beyond what we’ve seen before.”  

“I’m most excited about the things that we are not predicting right now,” he said. 

Before the Hubble launched, no exoplanets — planets that orbit stars outside our solar system — had been discovered. Scientists have since found thousands. 
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U.S. chipmaker Intel is facing criticism in China after it apologized Thursday for a letter the firm sent to suppliers asking them “to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.”

On Thursday, Intel posted a Chinese-language message on its WeChat and Weibo accounts apologizing for “trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public. Intel is committed to becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint development with China.”

Intel’s apology came as U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans the import of goods produced by Uyghur slave labor. Under the measure, a company is prohibited from importing from China’s Xinjiang region unless it can prove that its supply chains have not used labor from Uyghurs, ethnic Muslims reportedly enslaved in Chinese camps.

Beijing denies complaints of abuses in the mostly Muslim region.

Intel is just the latest multinational firm to be caught up in the struggle over the Uyghurs issue as China prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February. Intel is among the International Olympic Committee sponsors. According to Reuters, 26% of Intel’s 2020 total revenue was earned in China.

Earlier this month, Intel’s letter to suppliers asking them to be sure not to use labor, products or services from Xinjiang cited restrictions imposed by “multiple governments.”

That sparked a backlash in China, with calls for a boycott and criticism of the company in state and social media. Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, called Intel’s request to suppliers “arrogant and vicious,” according to reports.

Wang Junkai, also known as Karry Wang, a singer with the popular boy band TFBOYS, said on Weibo on Wednesday that he would not serve as an Intel brand ambassador. “National interests exceed everything,” he said, according to wire service reports.

Chinese officials acknowledged Intel’s apology.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a daily briefing in Beijing that “we note the statement and hope the relevant company will respect facts and tell right from wrong,” according to Reuters.

The White House also appeared to note the company’s apology.

Without naming Intel, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing Thursday that U.S. companies “should never feel the need to apologize for standing up for fundamental human rights or opposing repression,” according to reports.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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Polish Senator Krzysztof Brejza’s mobile phone was hacked with sophisticated spyware nearly three dozen times in 2019 when he was running the opposition’s campaign against the right-wing populist government in parliamentary elections, an internet watchdog found.

Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone — then doctored in a smear campaign — were aired by state-controlled TV in the heat of that race, which the ruling party narrowly won. With the hacking revelation, Brejza now questions whether the election was fair. 

It’s the third finding by the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab that a Polish opposition figure was hacked with Pegasus spyware from the Israeli hacking tools firm NSO Group. Brejza’s phone was digitally broken into 33 times from April 26, 2019, to October 23, 2019, said Citizen Lab researchers, who have been tracking government abuses of NSO malware for years. 

The other two hacks were identified earlier this week after a joint Citizen Lab-Associated Press investigation. All three victims blame Poland’s government, which has refused to confirm or deny whether it ordered the hacks or is a client of NSO Group. State security services spokesman Stanislaw Zaryn insisted Thursday that the government does not wiretap illegally and obtains court orders in “justified cases.” He said any suggestions the Polish government surveils for political ends were false. 

NSO, which was blacklisted by the U.S. government last month, says it sells its spyware only to legitimate government law enforcement and intelligence agencies vetted by Israel’s Defense Ministry for use against terrorists and criminals. It does not name its clients and would not say if Poland is among them.

Citizen Lab said it believes NSO keeps logs of intrusions so an investigation could determine who was behind the Polish hacks.

EU response 

In response to the revelations, European Union lawmakers said they would hasten efforts to investigate allegations that member nations such as Poland have abused Pegasus spyware.

The other two Polish victims are Ewa Wrzosek, an outspoken prosecutor fighting the increasingly hardline government’s undermining of judicial independence, and Roman Giertych, a lawyer who has represented senior leaders of Brejza’s party, Civic Platform, in sensitive cases. 

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday dismissed revelations that Giertych and Wrzosek were hacked as “fake news.” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he had no knowledge of “illegal actions aimed at the surveillance of citizens” but also said Poland was “not helpless” in taking action against people suspected of crimes. 

Giertych was hacked 18 times, also in the run-up to 2019 parliamentary elections that the ruling Law and Justice party won by a razor-thin margin. That victory has continued an erosion of democracy in the nation where the popular 1980s protest movement Solidarity presaged the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire. 

The intense tempo of the hacks of Brejza and Giertych “indicates an extreme level of monitoring” that raises pressing questions about abuses of power, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton said. Pegasus gives its operators complete access to a mobile device: They can extract passwords, photos, messages, contacts and browsing history, and activate the microphone and camera for real-time eavesdropping. 

“My heart sinks with each case we find,” Scott-Railton added. “This seems to be confirming our worst fear: Even when used in a democracy, this kind of spyware has an almost immutable abuse potential.”

Other confirmed victims have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists, heads of state and Uganda-based U.S. diplomats. 

An NSO spokesperson said Thursday that “the company does not and cannot know who the targets of its customers are, yet implements measures to ensure that these systems are used solely for the authorized uses.” The spokesperson said there is zero tolerance for governments that abuse the software; NSO says it has terminated multiple contracts of governments that have abused Pegasus, although it has not named any publicly. 

Despite any measures NSO might be taking, Citizen Lab notes, the list of abuse cases continues to grow. 

Doctored texts

Brejza, a 38-year-old attorney, told the AP that he has no doubt data stolen from his phone while he was chief of staff of the opposition coalition’s parliamentary campaign provided critical strategy insights. Combined with the smear effort against him, he said, it prevented “a fair electoral process.”

Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone were doctored to make it appear as if he created an online group that spread hateful anti-government propaganda; reports in state-controlled media cited the altered texts. But the group didn’t exist. 

Brejza says he now understands where TVP state television got them. 

“This operation wrecked the work of staff and destabilized my campaign,” he said. “I don’t know how many votes it took from me and the entire coalition.” 

Brejza won his Senate seat in that October 2019 race. But since the ruling party held on to the more powerful lower house of parliament, it has steered Poland further away from EU standards of liberal democracy. 

Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said at the time that control of state media gave the ruling party an unfair advantage but called the elections essentially free. They were unaware of the hacking. 

Brejza has been a Law and Justice party critic since it won power in 2015. For example, he has exposed large bonuses paid to senior government officials. In another case, he revealed that the postal service sent tens of thousands of dollars to a company tied to ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Brejza fears the hacking could have compromised whistleblowers who had reached out to him with evidence. 

NSO Group is facing daunting financial and legal challenges — including the threat of default on more than $300 million in debt — after governments used Pegasus spyware to spy on dissidents, journalists, diplomats and human rights activists from countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and the United States. The U.S. blacklisting of NSO has effectively barred U.S. companies from supplying technology to the Israeli firm.
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Under pressure from U.S. auto safety regulators, Tesla has agreed to stop allowing video games to be played on center touch screens while its vehicles are moving. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the Internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion. 

The move comes one day after the agency announced it would open a formal investigation into distracted driving concerns about Tesla’s video games, some of which could be played while cars are being driven. 

An agency spokeswoman says in a statement Thursday that the change came after regulators discussed concerns about the system with Tesla.

The statement says NHTSA regularly talks about infotainment screens with all automakers. A message was left Thursday seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department. 

The agency says its investigation of Tesla’s feature will continue even with the update. 

“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said. The agency said it assesses how manufacturers identify and guard against distraction hazards through misuse or intended use of screens and other convenience technology. 

The agency announced Wednesday that it would formally investigate Tesla’s screens after an owner from the Portland, Oregon, area filed a complaint when he discovered that a driver could play games while the cars are moving. 

The agency said that the “Passenger Play” feature could distract the driver and increase the risk of a crash. 

The probe covers about 580,000 Tesla Models S, X, Y and 3 from the 2017 through 2022 model years. 
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple Inc. to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain. 

A group of shareholders earlier this year asked Apple’s board to prepare a report on how the company protects workers in its supply chain from forced labor. The request for information covered the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many suppliers Apple has taken action against. 

In a letter from the SEC reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, regulators denied Apple’s move to block the proposal, saying that “it does not appear that the essential objectives of the proposal have been implemented” so far. 

The letter means that Apple will have to face a vote on the proposal at its annual shareholder meeting next year, barring a deal with the shareholders who made it. 

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

American lawmakers last week passed a bill banning imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor. 

“There’s rightfully growing concern at all levels of government about the concentration camplike conditions for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims living under Chinese government rule,” Vicky Wyatt, campaign director for SumOfUs, a group supporting the shareholder proposal, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

Apple routinely asks the SEC to skip shareholder proposals, and the requests are granted about half the time. 

The SEC also denied Apple’s request to skip a shareholder proposal that would give investors more information about the company’s use of nondisclosure agreements.
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New York’s largest convention center hosts about 175 events each year that draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city. To help offset the environmental impact, the owners have installed an urban farm and solar farm…on the building’s roof. Tina Trinh reports.
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In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that’s small comfort to Ken Trzaska.

Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline.

“That first day,” Trzaska said, “I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened.”

Even if the United States isn’t currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the attack on Trzaska’s college was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.

The college’s ordeal reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces in stamping out the threat — and its uneven progress in doing so since ransomware became an urgent national security problem last spring.

Smaller-scale attacks continue

U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests. Spy agencies have launched attacks against ransomware groups and the U.S. has pushed federal, state and local governments, as well as private industries, to boost protections.

Yet six months after Biden’s admonitions to Putin, it’s hard to tell whether hackers have eased up because of U.S. pressure. Smaller-scale attacks continue, with ransomware criminals continuing to operate from Russia with seeming impunity. Administration officials have given conflicting assessments about whether Russia’s behavior has changed since last summer. Further complicating matters, ransomware is no longer at the top of the U.S.-Russia agenda, with Washington focused on dissuading Putin from invading Ukraine.

The White House said it was determined to “fight all ransomware” through its various tools but that the government’s response depends on the severity of the attack.

“There are some that are law enforcement matters and others that are high impact, disruptive ransomware activity posing a direct national security threat that require other measures,” the White House statement said.

Ransomware attacks — in which hackers lock up victims’ data and demand exorbitant sums to return it — surfaced as a national security emergency for the administration after a May attack on Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.

The attack prompted the company to halt operations, causing gas shortages for days, though it resumed service after paying more than $4 million in ransom. Soon after came an attack on meat processor JBS, which paid an $11 million ransom.

Biden met with Putin in June in Geneva, where he suggested critical infrastructure sectors should be “off limits” for ransomware and said the U.S. should know in six months to a year “whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.”

He reiterated the message in July, days after a major attack on a software company, Kaseya, that affected hundreds of businesses, and said he expected Russia to take action on cybercriminals when the U.S. provides enough information to do so.

Since then, there have been some notable attacks from groups believed to be based in Russia, including against Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Rifle Association, but none of the same consequence or impact of those from last spring or summer.

‘Whole-of government’ effort

One reason may be increased U.S. government scrutiny, or fear of it.

The Biden administration in September sanctioned a Russia-based virtual currency exchange that officials say helped ransomware gangs launder funds. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against a suspected Ukrainian ransomware operator who was arrested in Poland and has recovered millions of dollars in ransom payments. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, told The New York Times his agency has begun offensive operations against ransomware groups. The White House says that “whole-of-government” effort will continue.

“I think the ransomware folks, the ones conducting them, are stepping back like, ‘Hey, if we do that, that’s going to get the United States government coming after us offensively,'” Kevin Powers, security strategy adviser for cyber risk firm CyberSaint, said of attacks against critical infrastructure.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have shared a small number of names of suspected ransomware operators with Russian officials, who have said they have started investigating, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

It’s unclear what Russia will do with those names, though Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted the countries have been having a useful dialogue and said “a working mechanism has been established and is actually functioning.”

It’s also hard to measure the impact of individual arrests on the overall threat. Even as the suspected ransomware hacker awaits extradition to the U.S. following his arrest in Poland, another who was indicted by federal prosecutors was later reported by a British tabloid to be living comfortably in Russia and driving luxury cars.

Some are skeptical about attributing any drop-off in high-profile attacks to U.S. efforts.

“It could have just been a fluke,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. He said asking Russia to crack down on large-scale attacks won’t work because “it’s way too granular of a request to calibrate criminal activity they don’t even fully control.”

Top American officials have given conflicting answers about ransomware trends since Biden’s discussions with Putin. Some FBI and Justice Department officials say they’ve seen no change in Russian behavior. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said there’s been a discernible decrease in attacks but that it was too soon to say why.

It’s hard to quantify the number of attacks given the lack of baseline information and uneven reporting from victims, though the absence of disruptive incidents is an important marker for a White House trying to focus its attention on the most significant national security risks and catastrophic breaches.

Victims of ransomware attacks in the past few months have included hospitals, small businesses, colleges like Howard University — which briefly took many of its systems offline after discovering a September attack — and Virginia’s Legislature.

Not if, but when

The attack at Lewis & Clark, in Godfrey, Illinois, was discovered two days before Thanksgiving when the school’s IT director detected suspicious activity and proactively took systems offline, said Trzaska, the president.

A ransom note from hackers demanded a payment, though Trzaska declined to reveal the sum or identify the culprits. Though many attacks come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe, some originate elsewhere.

With vital education systems affected, including email and the school’s online learning platform, administrators canceled classes for days after the Thanksgiving break and communicated updates to students via social media and through a public alert system.

The college, which had backups on the majority of its servers, resumed operations this month.

The ordeal was daunting enough to inspire Trzaska and another college president who he says endured a similar experience to plan a cybersecurity panel.

“The stock quote from everyone,” Trzaska said, “is, ‘Not if it’s going to happen, but when it’s going to happen.’” 
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After internal Facebook documents were shared widely with news organizations, the question remains whether and how Facebook will change. Michelle Quinn reports.
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China and Russia have begun collaborating on technology to rival the United States’ GPS and European Galileo satellite navigation systems, as the two countries pursue closer military and strategic ties.

Earlier this year, China agreed to host ground monitoring stations for Russia’s GLONASS positioning system on its soil, which improves global range and accuracy but can pose a security risk. In turn, Russia agreed to host ground stations for China’s BeiDou system.

The reciprocal agreement indicates a growing level of trust and cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, says analyst Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“Russia’s schism with the West and deepening confrontation and competition between China and the U.S. as two superpowers is definitely contributing to rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. There is a natural economic complementarity where Russia has (an) abundance of natural resources, and China has capital and technology to develop those resources. And finally, both are authoritarian states, so they don’t have this allergy when talking domestic political setup, or the poisoning of (Russian opposition leader) Alexi Navalny, or issues like Hong Kong or human rights in Xinjiang,” Gabuev told VOA.

It will take some time for the collaboration on satellite navigation systems to be felt on the ground.

“So far, we have yet to see important results, because in Russia, Russia still relies increasingly on GLONASS but also on GPS. We don’t have major BeiDou-linked projects,” Gabuev added.

Satellites

Satellites are seen as a crucial component of 21st century military power. Last month, Russia tested a missile against one of its own satellites. The U.S. said the resulting debris threatened astronauts on the International Space Station.

“What’s most troubling about that is the danger that it creates for the international community. It undermines strategic stability,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters Nov. 17.

Russia, China and the U.S. are among several nations developing hypersonic missiles, which travel through the upper atmosphere at up to five times the speed of sound.

Space treaty

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. had failed to engage on a joint Russian-Chinese space treaty.

“They have ignored for many years the initiative of Russia and China to prepare a treaty to prevent an arms race in space. They simply ignore it, insisting instead on developing some sort of universal rules,” Lavrov said.

In an interview June 11 with U.S. broadcaster NBC, Russian President Vladimir Putin said cooperation with Beijing was deepening.

“We have been working and will continue to work with China, which applies to all kinds of programs, including exploring deep space. And I think there is nothing but positive information here. Frankly, I don’t see any contradictions here,” Putin said.

There are limits to Russian and Chinese cooperation, Gabuev said.

“Both Russia and China are religious about their strategic autonomy. There is deep-seated nationalism, there is some level of mistrust and some level of competition in many of those areas where there is seeming complementarity, like space programs. I think that these advances in military technology is happening mostly in parallel, but not jointly.”

India

Gabuev notes that Russia has worked more closely with India than China, including on the development of the joint BrahMos cruise missile system since the 1990s.

“Russia felt secure enough to develop BrahMos missiles together with Indian colleagues. So, this military cooperation between Russia and China is deepening, it’s definitely causing a significant challenge to the West, particularly because it helps the PLA (China’s People’s Liberation Army) to become a really 21st century fighting power and a global military power. But at the same time, we don’t see the depth that exists between, for example, the U.S. and America’s allies,” Gabuev said.

India has also purchased Russia’s S-400 missile defense system, an attempt to counter China’s military might that also risks angering Delhi’s ally, the United States, and an indication of the complexity of strategic relations in a changing world order. 

 
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Airbus is set to deliver the final A380 superjumbo to Dubai’s Emirates on Thursday, marking the end of a 14-year run that gave Europe an instantly recognized symbol across the globe but failed to fulfil the commercial vision of its designers. 

Production of the world’s largest airliner — capable of seating 500 people on two decks together with perks like showers in first class — has ended after 272 were built compared with the 1,000 or more once predicted. 

Airbus, a planemaking conglomerate drawn together from separate entities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain to carry out their brainchild of mega-jets to beat congestion, pulled the plug in 2019 after airlines went for smaller, leaner models. 

Thursday’s handover is expected to be low key, partly because of COVID restrictions and also because Airbus is these days focusing its PR on environmental benefits of smaller jets. 

That’s in stark contrast to the spectacular light show that revealed the new behemoth in front of European leaders in 2005. 

Emirates is by far the largest buyer and still believes in the superjumbo’s ability to lure passengers. Even though no more A380s will be built, it will keep flying them for years. Many airlines disagree and have axed the A380 during the pandemic. 

Airline president Tim Clark refuses to bow to sceptics who say the days of spacious four-engined jets like the A380 are numbered as an airline seat becomes a commodity like any other. 

“I don’t share that view at all … And I still believe there is a place for the A380,” Clark recently told reporters. 

“Technocrats and accountants said it was not fit for purpose … That doesn’t resonate with our travelling public. They absolutely love that airplane,” he said. 

Shower talks

 The A380’s demise left deserted one of the world’s largest buildings, a 122,500-square-metre assembly plant in Toulouse. 

Airbus plans to use part of it to build some of the bread-and-butter narrowbody models that dominate sales like a deal with Qantas announced earlier on Thursday. 

But it is in Hamburg that some of the most striking features of the A380 evolved. 

Clark recalled how he huddled with Airbus developers in northern Germany to persuade Airbus chiefs in France to pay for the engineering needed to make in-flight showers a reality. 

“There was a lot of arm-folding and my friends in France were a little circumspect,” Clark said. 

“I had to sit with friends in the development unit in Hamburg having to build the showers, and then asked Toulouse management to see how it could be done, and so they bought in.” 

That innovation generated headlines but did not translate into sales needed to keep the A380 going. 

The plane was designed in the 1990s when travel demand was soaring and China offered seemingly unlimited potential. 

By the time the first delivery came in 2007, the plane was more than two years late. And when Emirates got its first A380 a year later, the emerging financial crisis was already forcing analysts to trim their forecasts for the biggest jets. 

Boeing was meanwhile capturing orders for a revolutionary new 787 Dreamliner, to be followed by the Airbus A350. 

“There was a slowing down of appetite and enthusiasm. We didn’t share that view; we put this great [A380] aircraft to work,” Clark said on the sidelines of an airlines meeting. 

“We have what I think is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever flown.” 
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