In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Jun. 28, 2022

Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has completed a range of ground tests for its KF-21 Boramae fighter aircraft, paving the way for its first flight in July.

With its new Vulcan rocket on track to debut late this year or in early 2023, United Launch Alliance (ULA) is aiming to end Atlas V launch services in late 2025, ULA clarified following a June 28 press conference where the company erroneously said Atlas V would be retired in late 2024.

The U.S. Air Force wants to modify its Boeing KC-135s and KC-46s in a new effort that the service says is independent of the KC-Y “bridge tanker” program it started last year, but now says is looking less likely to become a competition.

The U.S. Army on June 28 awarded contracts to Raytheon Technologies and Palantir to create a prototype for its Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN).

The U.S. Space Force should avoid duplicating the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) resources of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for tactical needs, the newly confirmed head of space acquisitions says.

Virgin Orbit is targeting September for the first of two launches this year from the UK’s new spaceport in Cornwall, a mission that will mark the first rocket launch from British soil and the first commercial launch from Western Europe.

NASA’s lunar Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (Capstone) small satellite successfully launched from Mahia, New Zealand, early June 28 U.S. time.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan on June 28 reversed his opposition to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden, allowing the Scandinavian countries a clear path to joining the transatlantic alliance at a moment of heightened security concerns over Russia’s four-month-old war with Ukraine.

When the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) sent its Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR) system downrange for an overseas assessment, the lab’s engineers back home did not want to sit still and wait for the system to come home, so they got to work on upgrades.

Northrop Grumman’s 17th NASA-contracted Cygnus resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) departed early June 28, ending a four-month stay that included a successful demonstration of the commercial freighter’s ability to reboost the outpost.

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