In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Aug. 09 2023

Credit: Polish Defense Ministry.

Poland has taken delivery of the first of four anti-submarine warfare (ASW) Leonardo AW101 helicopters.

Credit: Hypersonix.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions and Australia’s Hypersonix Launch Systems on Aug. 9 announced a new teaming agreement to have the latter’s air-breathing DART AE system integrated with the former’s Zeus family of solid rocket motors.

Credit: Independent Photo Agency Srl/Alamy.

Romania has reportedly begun the domestic process to acquire the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with a formal request to purchase the aircraft being made to the parliament in Bucharest.

Credit: New Zealand Defence Force.

Australian officials have disclosed that the flight data recorder from a recently crashed NH90 helicopter—known locally as the MRH-90 Taipan—was recovered by divers on Aug. 8.

Credit: NASA.

NASA has awarded Advanced Space two new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contracts—one  to develop trajectories for spacecraft flying in cislunar orbits using low thrust propulsion and a second to develop deorbit technologies that lower the orbital debris risk posed by small satellite constellations.

Credit: Axiom Space.

Houston-based Axiom Space and Poland have signed an agreement with support from the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch a Polish ESA astronaut on a future private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Credit: Lunar Outpost.

Colorado-based Lunar Outpost has delivered its first flight model Moon rover, the Lunar Vertex Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for integration and final testing for a 2024 NASA-funded mission.