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The Eclipse 500 is a small six-seat business jet aircraft manufactured by Eclipse Aviation. Eclipse 500 became the first of a new class of Very Light Jet when it was delivered in late 2006. The aircraft is powered by two lightweight Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F turbofan engines in aft fuselage-mounted nacelles. Production of the Eclipse 500 was halted in mid-2008 due to lack of funding, and the company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 25 November 2008. The company then entered Chapter 7 liquidation on 24 February 2009.〔Walrath, Mary F.: ''Order (A) Authorizing The Debtors to Sell Substantially All Of Their Assets Free and Clear etc''. United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, 23 January 2009, Case Number 08-13031 (MFW)〕 After lengthy Chapter 7 procedure, Eclipse Aerospace was confirmed as the new owner of the assets of the former Eclipse Aviation on 20 August 2009 and opened for business on 1 September 2009. In October 2011 Eclipse Aerospace announced that they will put a new version of the aircraft, to be called the Eclipse 550, into production with deliveries starting in 2013. In April 2015 Eclipse Aerospace was merged with Kestrel Aircraft to form One Aviation. ==Design and development== The Eclipse 500 is based on the Williams V-Jet II, which was designed and built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites in 1997 for Williams International. It was intended to be used as a testbed and demonstrator for their new FJX-2 turbofan engine. The aircraft and engine debuted at the 1997 Oshkosh Airshow. The V-Jet II had an all-composite structure with a forward-swept wing, a V-tail, each fin of which was mounted on the nacelle of one of the two engines. Williams had not intended to produce the aircraft, but it attracted a lot of attention, and Eclipse Aviation was founded in 1998 to further develop and produce the aircraft. The prototype and only V-Jet II aircraft was obtained by Eclipse Aviation along with the program, and was donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 2001. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eclipse 500」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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