France–The European Space Agency (ESA)’s BepiColombo, the probe it launched in 2018 to study the planet Mercury, is performing a flyby of Earth this week as a gravity-assist maneuver in its seven-year-long journey.
The U.S. Army is aggressively upgrading its legacy AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook and HH-60 Black Hawk fleets, but is encountering some delays in these efforts related to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
A NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts successfully docked to the International Space Station April 9, just more than 6 hr. after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with all three men prepared, if necessary, to continue minimal staffing of the orbiting science lab through October.
“Honey, I shrunk the NASA payload,” is a global crowdsourcing initiative unveiled by the space agency on April 9 to significantly reduce the size of rugged instruments, sensors and experiments that can be launched to the Moon.
NASA has selected Masten Space Systems, of Mojave, California, to launch, land and oversee operations of eight science payloads at the lunar south pole for at least 12 days in 2022 under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Boeing’s Airpower Teaming System unmanned aircraft is on its landing gear and powered up as the loyal wingman demonstrator progresses toward a first flight planned in Australia later this year.
A ride in a French Air Force Rafale B didn’t go as planned when an overstressed, back-seat passenger inadvertently ejected from the two-seat fighter, and the aircraft was saved only because of a previously undetected flaw that prevented the pilot’s ejection, a new French military report said.
Arlington Capital Partners, a private equity group focusing on aerospace and defense, is bolting on more assets to its AEgis Technologies brand for U.S. national security customers.
With key customer Boeing recently suspending much of its own work indefinitely to try to deep-clean amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems announced April 8 it has also practically halted production for Boeing programs performed at its headquarters and in Oklahoma for an indefinite period of time.
Australian nanosat startup Sky and Space Global has entered voluntary administration—a process similar to Chapter 11 U.S. bankruptcy—after posting losses of more than AUS$30 million ($18.5 million) in 2019.
NASA will invest $7 million to advance a range of 23 early stage technologies with the potential to hasten the journey of humans to Mars and increase the odds of success for robotic missions selected to explore potentially habitable extrasolar planets and ocean worlds.
