Tag: engineering

Virgin Galactic Completes Fourth Commercial Suborbital Flight

Space News reports Virgin Galactic completed its fourth commercial suborbital space flight on October 6, “carrying three customers that included the first person from Pakistan to go to space. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle, VSS Unity, took off from Spaceport America attached to its VMS Eve mothership at 11:28 a.m. Eastern. VSS Unity released from the plane at 12:10 p.m. Eastern, flying to an apogee of 87.5 kilometers before gliding back to a runway landing at the spaceport.”
Full Story (Space News)

Joby Aviation Founder Says Electric Air Taxis Will be in Service by 2025

The AP reports that in an interview, Joby Aviation founder JoeBen Bevirt said that its electric air taxis will be in service within two years. Bevirt “insists that his Santa Cruz, California-based company…can meet an ambitious target of entering commercial air taxi service in 2025.” However, “Like other eVTOL startups, Joby is losing money – more than $400 million in 2021-2022. Analysts don’t know when, if ever, it will be profitable.” Bevirt said, “Our goal is absolutely still to achieve commercial service in 2025, and given the progress we’re making on certification and the progress we’re making on the manufacturing front, we’re excited to just be day after day knocking down the milestones.”
Full Story (Associated Press)

SpaceX Launches 21 More Starlink Satellites from California

SPACE reports that early Monday morning, SpaceX launched 21 more of its Starlink broadband satellites “atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.” Liftoff occurred at 3:23 a.m. ET, which was “streamed live via SpaceX’s account on X (formerly known as Twitter).” Eight and half minutes after launch, the Falcon 9’s first stage made a successful “vertical landing at sea on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.” Just over an hour after launch, the Falcon 9’s upper stage “deployed the 21 Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit.”
Full Story (SPACE)

Video

SpaceX Starlink 112 launch and Falcon 9 first stage landing, 9 October 2023
(SciNews; YouTube)

Wisk Aero Makes Autonomous eVTOL Flight from California Airport

Aviation Week reports Wisk Aero has started “conducting test flights of its autonomous air taxi out of Long Beach Airport, California, which the Boeing subsidiary believes is the first time an electric-vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) vehicle has flown in Los Angeles.” Wisk’s fifth-generation Cora demonstrator is being used for the test flights. According to the article, Wisk’s purpose for the flights “is to capture learnings about conducting autonomous operations at a major commercial airport.”
Full Story (Aviation Week)

US Airlines Moving to Larger Aircraft to Combat Operating Challenges

Reuters reports that United Airlines 110 aircraft order from The Boeing Company and Airbus this week is part of a trend of US carriers moving to larger aircraft in order to deal with supply chain issues causing jet delivery delays. United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said, “The country is just not building a lot more runways and that’s just going to cause us to need to upgauge our aircraft to respond to growing demand.” Nocella “added that travel demand cannot be met without bigger planes.” The company “aims to increase average seats per departure in North America by more than 40% in 2027 from 2019.” United’s latest order “includes 50 Boeing 787-9 planes that it plans to operate on many routes currently being serviced by 767s.” That version of 787 “holds up to 129 more seats than the 767s in its fleet.” Similarly, the 60 Airbus A321neos “that United is buying can accommodate up to 30% more seats than some of Boeing’s 757s that it has been flying.”
Full Story (Reuters)

Elon Musk Believes SpaceX Can Land On Mars Three to Four Years from Now

The New York Times reports that SpaceX founder Elon Musk “said the company could land a spacecraft on Mars three to four years from now.” In a Q&A session with International Astronautical Federation President Clay Mowry, Musk said, “I think it’s sort of feasible within the next four years to do an uncrewed test landing there.”
Full Story (New York Times – Subscription Publication)

2023 ASCEND Adds Lunar Luncheon Session – Chandrayaan-3: The Journey to the Moon

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 6, 2023 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce a featured luncheon session – Chandrayaan-3: The Journey to the Moon, by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), during 2023 ASCEND at Caesars Forum, Las Vegas. The success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission makes India the fourth spacefaring nation to soft land on the moon.

Registration for the 2023 ASCEND event is open now. Journalists from around the world are invited to cover 2023 ASCEND; press passes are available for credentialed media by request.

Chandrayaan-3: The Journey to the Moon

Presenter: M. Sankaran, Distinguished Scientist and Director, U.R. Rao Satellite Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
Date: Tuesday, 24 October, 1245 hrs PT

In August, the world was captivated by the images from the surface of the moon as the Chandrayaan-3 mission unfolded in real time. From the successful landing at the south pole of the moon to the rollout of the Pragyan rover, the public – along with the professional aerospace community – watched in awe.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission included difficult engineering challenges – from safely landing on the moon to reaching the lunar south pole. Sankaran will share insights into the performance of Chandrayaan-3 onboard scientific instruments and key takeaways about the moon. He will cover the complex overall mission configuration, including highlights of the satellite bus systems and the objectives of the scientific instruments. Looking back, Sankaran also will discuss lessons learned from the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019. The Chandrayaan team has demonstrated remarkable resilience, persevering over time to continue advancing its lunar exploration program.

AIAA Media Contact: Rebecca Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell

About ASCEND
Powered by AIAA, ASCEND promotes the collaborative, interdisciplinary, outcomes-driven community of professionals, students, and enthusiasts around the world who are accelerating humanity’s progress toward our off-world future! For more information, visit ascend.events, or follow ASCEND on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit aiaa.org, or follow AIAA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

2023 ASCEND to Feature NASA’s William H. Pickering Lecture Showcasing Climate Science Advances

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 5, 2023 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce the 2023 William H. Pickering Lecture, “Observing Earth’s Precious Water from Space,” which will showcase the advances in Earth’s climate science that are being made possible through the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission. The lecture is the featured evening session, 1830 hrs PT, Tuesday, 24 October, during 2023 ASCEND at Caesars Forum, Las Vegas.

Registration for the 2023 ASCEND event is open now. Journalists from around the world are invited to cover 2023 ASCEND; press passes are available for credentialed media by request.

2023 William H. Pickering Lecture: “Observing Earth’s Precious Water from Space”

Lecturers: Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, Ocean physics program manager, NASA Headquarters, and Parag Vaze, project manager, SWOT Mission, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Shiffer will describe the SWOT science, calibration, and validation efforts along with the applications potential that SWOT enables. Vaze will describe the challenges of the development, implementation, and operations of one of the most complex observing systems for observing Earth’s precious waters.
Tuesday, 24 October, 1830 hrs PT
This lecture will be delivered in person at 2023 ASCEND in Las Vegas and will be recorded and available on demand.

The 2023 William H. Pickering Lecture is about a space mission that will address some of Earth’s most pressing climate change questions of our time by informing decisions about our daily lives and livelihoods. The SWOT Mission was developed jointly by NASA and the French space agency, CNES, with contributions from the UK and Canadian space agencies. Using state-of-the-art “radar interferometry” technology, SWOT is measuring the elevation of water to observe millions of lakes and wetlands with surface areas 250 m2 and thousands of rivers whose width exceeds 100 m, while detecting ocean features with unprecedented resolution, accuracy, and spatial coverage. The primary science payload, a novel Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn), is the first in-flight demonstration of wide-swath (2, 50Km swaths) SAR interferometry for more accurate and comprehensive mapping of Earth’s ocean and surface water from space.

The SWOT Mission is expected to revolutionize hydrology and oceanography, providing a set of observations for nearly all surface waters on planet Earth, allowing scientists to determine changing volumes of water across the globe. SWOT will also significantly advance climate and ocean sciences by detecting ocean features with 10 times better resolution than present technologies. The higher resolution will reveal small-scale ocean features that contribute to the Earth’s fundamental cycles of heat, energy, carbon, moisture, and nutrients.

Measurements taken by SWOT are key to understanding surface water availability, informing water-resource management, preparing for important water-related hazards such as floods and droughts, improving ocean circulation forecasts, and benefiting ship and offshore commercial operations, along with coastal planning activities such as flood prediction.

Named for the former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director William H. Pickering, the lectureship honors his initiation and leadership of America’s robotic scientific space program, from Explorer I in 1958 through the development of the Viking Mars orbiters and the Voyager outer planet and interstellar missions.

AIAA Media Contact: Rebecca Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell

Collins Aerospace Opens ‘The Grid’ in Illinois

FlightGlobal reports that Collins Aerospace “has now opened ‘The Grid,’ a long-planned Illinois facility that houses its development of electric and hybrid-electric propulsion technologies for future aircraft.” The aerospace supplier “had previously intended to open the site in the city of Rockford in 2020.” But Collins “slowed some of its electric propulsion work during the Covid-19 pandemic.” The announced opening happened on Wednesday, with the site described as a “$50 million advanced electric power systems lab” focused on hybrid- and more-electric systems. Encompassing 2,323sq m (25,000sq ft) of space, the site “will initially support testing of equipment at power levels reaching 8MW.” Collins already “supplies massive generators to aircraft including Boeing’s 787 and has in recent years amped up its development of new electric aircraft systems.” It recently “developed a 1MW electric motor as part of a broader RTX project to modify a De Havilland Canada Dash 8-100 regional aircraft with a hybrid-electric propulsion system.” Pratt & Whitney Canada “is assisting with that project, which involves replacing one of the Dash 8’s P&WC PW120A turboprops with a hybrid-electric powertrain.” The companies “delayed the project during the Covid-19 pandemic and have recently said they aim for the Dash 8 to get airborne with the hybrid system for the first time in 2024.” Separately, Collins and Pratt & Whitney “are jointly developing a broader line hybrid-electric systems for the emerging urban air mobility sector.”
Full Story (FlightGlobal)

Video

Collins Aerospace opens advanced electric power systems lab, The Grid
(Collins Aerospace; YouTube)

SpaceX Launches 22 More Starlink Satellites

Spaceflight Now reported that the first of two Falcon 9 missions SpaceX “is planning for Sunday carried into orbit the largest batch of second-generation Starlink satellites to be launched from the West Coast.” The Falcon 9 “lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT / 0900 UTC) with 22 satellites aboard.” The California launch “will be followed on Sunday by another Starlink delivery mission carrying 23 satellites, which will launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 UTC).” The Starlink 7-6 mission “was the first time a Falcon 9 has carried 22 of the so-called V2 Mini satellites from the West Coast.” Previously, missions from there “had been limited to 15 or 21 Starlinks, depending on the orbit.” On the East Coast, a Falcon 9 “launched 23 V2 Minis a week ago on Oct. 21, one more than the previous maximum load for a mission from the Cape.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)

Video

SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg, Oct. 29, 2023 at 5 a.m. EDT
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)