In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Oct. 13 2022

Over much of the last two decades the global fleet of light fighter aircraft (defined by Aviation Week as any air-to-air combat aircraft with a maximum take off weight less than 30,000 lb.) has declined steadily, largely as a result of the retirement of Cold War-era types like the Northrop F-5.

Credit: Dovetail Electric Aviation. Australian startup Dovetail has selected Mobius.energy to supply the battery system for its planned conversion of the Cessna Grand Caravan and other commuter aircraft to electric propulsion. 

Credit: Roscosmos. A Russian Proton heavy rocket has successfully orbited the first Angolan telecommunication satellite.

Credit: U.S. Central Command. The U.S. Navy’s new effort to link uncrewed assets across the Middle East for improved maritime surveillance will grow next month when the service includes uncrewed aircraft along with more vessels for an expansion in numbers and capability.

Credit: NASA. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)—launched nearly 4 1/2 years ago to search for extrasolar planets—has suspended science operations in response to a suspected flight computer reset, a mission status update says.

Credit: Sierra Space. With business partnerships sweeping across the new space and commercial space marketplace–for survival, growth or both–relative newcomer Sierra Space has opened its own corporate venture capital (VC) office to facilitate strategic tie-ups with other space upstarts.

Credit: NASA. NASA and SpaceX on Oct. 13 delayed the departure of the Crew-4 Dragon Freedom astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) for a second day due to unfavorable weather in the recovery zones.

Credit: Raytheon Technologies. France, Spain and the UK have committed to supplying additional air defense equipment to Ukraine as Kyiv calls upon Western nations to supply the country with advanced ground-based air defense systems for its war with Russia.

Credit: Raytheon. A group of 15 nations led by Germany have signed an initiative to strengthen European ground-based air defense capabilities. 

Credit: HOSPO. Japan’s Space Cotan Ltd. and the Hokkaido town of Taiki have begun the expansion of Hokkaido Spaceport (HOSPO), part of its vision to create a space Silicon Valley in Japan.

Credit: Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy. Pyongyang has claimed the successful live-firing of two long-range cruise missiles on Oct. 12, as part of the operationalization of its tactical nuclear capabilities. 

Credit: businesswire.com. Venture capital groups for Airbus and Boeing have teamed with others to provide a $10 million seed funding round for Arizona-based Solestial, a startup working on solar panel technology for satellites and spacecraft.