Spaceflight Now reports that NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei “joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth Wednesday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out a U.S.-record 355-day stay in space.”
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Tag: Record-Setting
Lockheed Martin Says UAV Made Record-Breaking Endurance Flight
FlightGlobal reports that Lockheed Martin “says a specially configured Stalker unmanned drone successfully completed a continuous endurance flight of 39h, 17min.” If certified “by the Switzerland-based World Air Sports Federation which governs aviation records, the flight would represent the longest ever by an aircraft weighing between 5kg and 25kg.”
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ESA Sets Record with Deep-space Laser Link to NASA’s Psyche Probe Using Altechna Optics
Military Aerospace reports, “The European Space Agency (ESA) has completed a deep-space optical communications campaign by sending a laser signal to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Psyche spacecraft more than 186 million miles from Earth, using optical components provided by Altechna. Altechna, a global custom optics manufacturer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, supplied 3-inch mirrors and windows for the Ground Laser Transmitter system, which shaped and stabilized the laser beam. The components maintained beam quality under heavy power use and atmospheric interference.”
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