President Trump issued his administration’s sixth Space Policy Directive on Dec. 16, promoting the development of space nuclear power and propulsion technologies to support a permanent human presence on the Moon by the end of the 2020s and the human exploration of Mars in the decade that follows.
With U.S. hypersonic weapon testing poised to ramp up, NASA has awarded Northrop Grumman Systems a $70 million contract to support the SkyRange program to field a long-range, flight-test data collection capability based on high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft.
Ten years after the X-51 first flew under scramjet power, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has completed ground tests of air-breathing hypersonic engines that could accelerate a vehicle 10 times the X-51’s size to speeds in excess of Mach 5.
The Kazakhstan Ministry of Emergency Relief on Dec. 12 received a new Mil Mi-8AMT heavy transport helicopter—the first airframe in the Mi-8/17 family assembled outside Russia.
Plans to move the U.S. Air Force’s UK RC-135 Rivet Joint operating location from RAF Mildenhall to RAF Fairford have been canceled after the U.S. Defense Department decided to keep RAF Mildenhall open.
Persistent lapses in NASA’s oversight of key Artemis elements continue to jeopardize upcoming test flight launch schedules and plans for hardware upgrades after the agency returns to the Moon’s surface with human explorers, a U.S. Government Accountability Office audit says.
The U.S. State Department has approved the Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to Italy of two special-mission versions of the Gulfstream G550 business jet configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).
Startup ZeroAvia has raised $37.7 million in funding to develop a zero-emission hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion system to power 19-seat regional airliners.
Northrop Grumman helped lead a seed-round venture capital investment in Philadelphia-based Deepwave Digital, and the companies are looking to integrate Deepwave’s edge-compute, artificial intelligence (AI) technology into an “array” of sensor systems to improve capabilities and longevity.
Honeywell International’s venture capital arm has invested in DarwinAI, an “explainable” artificial intelligence (AI) company located in Waterloo, Canada.
Redwire, the private equity-backed space rollup, said Dec. 15 it bought LoadPath, a developer of payload adapters, deployable structures and thermal products for the space industry.
Four and half years since the Brexit referendum and aerospace is no nearer to understanding what the UK’s future trading relationship with its nearest and largest trading partner will look like.
The U.S. Space Force may establish its acquisition and sustainment arm, Space Systems Command, earlier than planned, the chief of space operations says.
The U.S. military on Dec. 9 was able to demonstrate how a piece of its future military Internet of Things, the Advanced Battle Management System, might work.
Air taxi startup Blade Urban Air Mobility will be taken over by a special purpose acquisition company, setting up what could become the first publicly traded electric-powered air vehicle service provider as the technology emerges this decade.
The survivability of NASA’s exploration agenda depends substantially on bipartisan congressional support, according to Jim Bridenstine, the agency’s soon-to-depart administrator.
German air rescue service ADAC Luftrettung has reserved two VoloCity electric air taxis from Volocopter to prepare for operational emergency medical service tests of the piloted multicopters in 2023.
The European Space Agency has awarded ArianeGroup a €33 million ($40 million) contract for the “initial development phase” of the Themis demonstrator for a reusable launcher’s first stage.
