Aerospace America reports that a remotely piloted air taxi prototype “appears to have crashed during testing at the company’s Flight Test Centre at Cotswold Airport, based on photos posted online by local journalists.” Vertical Aerospace confirmed that its VX4 all-electric “experimental prototype” was involved in an “incident” at the test center, and said “there were no injuries.” The statement “was made in a note filed today to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).” Vertical is “required to reveal ‘results of operations’ and other significant developments to SEC because its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.” The company told the SEC, “Our flight test programme is designed to establish the limits of the aircraft’s performance, and the incident occurred during an uncrewed test of the aircraft’s maneuverability during a motor failure test scenario, which is a key requirement to progress to crewed operations.”
Full Story (Aerospace America)
Tag: August 2023
Slingshot 1 Provides Aerospace Corp with Demonstration of Satellite Integration
Space News reports that through the Slingshot 1 mission, the Aerospace Corp. “has demonstrated how open standards and nonproprietary interfaces can help streamline satellite integration and operation.” Aerospace Slingshot Payload Operator David Hinkley said that after more than a year of on-orbit operations, Slingshot “has been a huge success.” The 19 Slingshot payloads “were developed independently and integrated in a couple of weeks prior to launch in July 2022 of the 12-unit cubesat on a Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket.” Speedy integration “was possible thanks to Handle, a modular plug-and-play interface that allows payloads to draw power from the satellite bus and to communicate with the satellite and other payloads.”
Full Story (Space News)
Wizz Air Orders 75 More A321neos
Aviation Week reports that Wizz Air shareholders attending the carrier’s annual general meeting “have voted in favor of buying a further 75 Airbus A321neo family aircraft.” The firm order “takes Wizz Air’s total order for the largest variant of the Airbus single-aisle family to 434.”
Full Story (Aviation Week – Subscription publication)
Northrop Grumman Prepares for Final Antares Flight
Space News reports that a Cygnus cargo spacecraft “is set to launch to the International Space Station on the final flight of a version of an Antares rocket with Russian and Ukrainian components.” NASA and Northrop Grumman “completed a launch readiness review July 30 for the NG-19 mission, approving plans to launch the spacecraft on Aug. 1 at 8:31 p.m. Eastern from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.” The Cygnus is “carrying nearly 3,750 kilograms of cargo to the station, including experiments, hardware and crew supplies.” An on-time launch “would allow the spacecraft to arrive at the station early Aug. 4 and remain there at least three months.”
Full Story (Space News)
Virgin Galactic Reveals Dates for First Commercial Space Flights
The Street reports that Virgin Galactic has unveiled its inaugural commercial flight dates. “Seats have been assigned for the Virgin Space Ship Unity and for the inaugural Galactic 01, a scientific research mission,” which is “scheduled between June 27 and 30.” The next flight, Galactic 02, is scheduled for August “with the first group of excited space ticket holders.” Initial presale tickets may have “seemed like a steep price but now the going rate for a single ticket is $450,000, more than double the original price.”
Full Story (The Street)
Musk Says SpaceX Plans to Launch Starship Again in Six to Eight Weeks
SPACE reports that Elon Musk announced Tuesday on Twitter that the SpaceX is shooting for another liftoff of Starship six to eight weeks from now. That timeline “may be ambitious, however, given the amount of prep work required ahead of the second flight.” For example, the liftoff “damaged Starbase’s orbital launch mount, blasting out a big crater beneath it and sending chunks of concrete flying, along with a huge cloud of dust and other debris.” SpaceX has been “developing and testing a water-cooled steel plate that will sit beneath the mount and prevent a recurrence of this problem, Musk said recently.” The company could also face some regulatory hurdles in a “coalition of environmental groups [that] is currently suing the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the body that issued Starship’s launch license, saying the agency didn’t properly assess the potential damage that the giant vehicle could inflict on the South Texas ecosystem and the human communities around Starbase.”
Full Story (SPACE)