Aerospace & Defense Roundup: Jun. 04

First Block III Super Hornet Completes First Flight

Boeing has flown the first in a new generation of the F/A-18F Super Hornet family, the company announced June 4. The unpainted aircraft, F287, took off on June 3 from the Boeing assembly line in St. Louis, Missouri.

SpaceX Adds Another 60 Satellites To Starlink Network

Four days after launching astronauts for a flight test of its commercial space taxi, SpaceX fired off another Falcon 9 rocket to resume building out its Starlink satellite network for high-speed internet service. The 229-ft (70-m) tall reused rocket, making its fifth flight, lifted off at 9:25 p.m. EDT on June 3 from Cape Canaveral AFS with a batch of 60 Starlink satellites, boosting the constellation to 480 spacecraft.

LanzaJet Secures $25M To Launch Sustainable Fuel Production

Carbon recycler LanzaTech has launched a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) spinoff, LanzaJet, with $25 million in backing from Canadian and Japanese investors.

NASA Makes October Space Station Launch Assignment

HOUSTON—NASA has assigned veteran astronaut Kate Rubins, a cancer researcher and the first person to sequence DNA in space, to the October launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket on a six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

SDA To Seek Satellite Bus, Integration Bids Soon

The Space Development Agency is moving forward with plans to put on contract the initial phases of its ambitious next-generation U.S. Defense Space Architecture, the agency’s director said in a June 4 Aviation Week webinar.

Italian F-35 Air Policing Personnel Face Four-Week Quarantine

Italian Air Force personnel participating in the Icelandic Air Policing mission later this month will face four weeks of quarantine before starting the deployment due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

A400M

Second Turkish Indigenous Attack Helo Concept Emerges

Turkish Aerospace (TUSAS) has revealed a mock-up of a second indigenous attack helicopter concept under development. The model of the T-629 was revealed in imagery released by Turkish media during a visit of defense minister Hulusi Akar, Technology Minister Mustafa Varank and Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu to the company’s Ankara facilities on June 4.

USAF Lays Out Plans To Replace MQ-9 Fleet In 2030

Resurrecting the MQ-X concept canceled a decade ago, the U.S. Air Force on June 3 invited industry to submit ideas to start replacing the MQ-9 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) by 2030 with a next-generation, medium-altitude strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) UAS.

Canada Concludes Recovery Operation For Crashed CH-148 Cyclone

Canada has concluded an undersea search for the wreckage of a Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone naval helicopter that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on April 29, killing all six personnel onboard.