German Aerospace Center (DLR)

DLR’s climate-friendly designs; High-power aviation fuel cell; and eVTOL hover test facility.

Distributed-propulsion testbed flies; Airbus hydrogen APU demo; uncrewed delivery corridor; another Chinese eVTOL; and Wright’s megawatt-scale electric engine.

Electric trainer tested; design tools for hydrogen aircraft; uncrewed amphibian; turbine hybrid; and cargo eVTOL.

New drive systems combining hydrogen fuel cells and distributed electric propulsion can be costly to develop.

Organizations are making progress but still debating the best way to prevent contrail formation.

The effort is based on the prospect that lunar resources can be mined and processed into construction materials at a lower cost than launching them from Earth.

Using satellites for radio communications over oceans promises air traffic management efficiencies.

Europe’s Clean Sky 2 research program ends in March, having matured an array of potential technologies for Airbus’ next airliner.

Two-thirds of Europe’s Clean Aviation research projects are focused on more sustainable advanced propulsion technologies for service entry in the mid-2030s.

MTU's three-year Herops project under Europe’s Clean Aviation research program aims to demonstrate a 1.2-megawatt propulsion system.

Future wings will be designed with better aircraft fuel efficiency in mind, meaning engineers will explore every way to cut their drag.

The agency and airframer are overcoming atmospheric and technical challenges to see how sustainable aviation fuel affects emissions and contrails.

Carbon cycle benefits of SAF are known, but will it help reduce the formation of persistent contrails? A Boeing and NASA flight test looks to find out.

Flying hydrogen laboratory; trainer flies on SAF; Joby eVTOL for Korea; and airport cargo robot.

German aerospace center DLR has taken delivery of a Dornier 328-100 modified by Deutsche Aircraft to be a flying testbed for sustainable aviation technologies.

Abating long-haul climate impact; Automotive power for e-aviation; CycloRotor flies; Pentagon battery move; and Avic’s eVTOL.

A study by German aerospace center DLR also shows that further reductions in climate impact are possible by switching to hydrogen as an aviation energy source.

Germany’s H2Fly has completed the first flights of a hydrogen-electric aircraft using cryogenic liquid-hydrogen storage.

The 2.5-m-long Mira-Light demonstrator is intended to “fine-tune” the flight control systems for the follow-on, aerospike-powered Mira demonstrator.

The goal of the 40-month, $4.2 million project was to actively suppress flutter using onboard sensors, algorithms and control surfaces.

Enabling contrail avoidance; hybrid regional demonstrator; next-generation HAPS; and quantum computing for R&D.

German aerospace center DLR has flown a subscale demonstrator of the HyBird concept for a small hybrid-electric regional aircraft.

The fuselage shell was made by Premium Aerotech, Airbus, Aernnova and German aerospace center DLR under the EU's Multifunctional Fuselage Demonstrator project.

Backed by European and UK research programs, Rolls is evaluating “vast unknowns’’ posed by the future move to hydrogen-fueled propulsion.

Arianespace’s workhorse Ariane 5 rocket closed out 27 years of operations on July 5 with its 117th mission.