NASA and Lockheed Martin formally debuted the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft Friday. Using this one-of-a-kind experimental airplane, NASA aims to gather data that could revolutionize air travel.
Vulcan was built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin and is designed to replace two older rockets.
Engineers at NASA successfully test-fired an innovative Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine combustor, a potentially revolutionary propulsion technology that could deliver a lander to the lunar surface or propel a spacecraft to Mars.
So far, only six countries have successfully launched more than 1 ton of equipment into space using domestically developed rockets. Now, a seventh, North Korea, has successfully done so, almost successfully.
The launch came five years and one month after Astra was founded in 2016. SpaceX required six years and four months and Virgin Orbit needed seven or more years to successfully reach orbit.
Nothing built by human hands has ever traveled faster than NASA's Parker Solar Probe. In late April, it smashed two wild space records. It was clocked at over 531,000 km/hour as it zipped through the sun's outer atmosphere.
Last week, Virgin Galactic, the space tourism firm owned by Richard Branson, revealed its newest design, SpaceShip III, with the first vehicle in this line dubbed “VSS Imagine.”
US-based firm Aevum has unveiled a massive drone called the Ravn X that is designed to act as an autonomous, airborne launch system for small satellites.
A U.S. company sends the largest zero-emissions airplane yet on its first flight. These electric commercial aircraft will enable the offering of flying services of people and packages in a way previously not possible.
Nasa astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first to fly in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, carried on top of one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets towards a planned rendezvous with the ISS.
Stratolaunch has revealed the designs of two hypersonic aircraft plus a reusable space plane that will be launched from its giant Carrier Aircraft launch plane. The company hopes to begin test flights of these vehicles by 2022.
Companies large and small are working on cleaning up the skies with electric airplanes, bringing back supersonic travel, and even flirting with the edge of space to transport passengers across the world.
SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle is a fully, rapidly reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and anywhere else in the solar system.
The European Space Agency is developing its own reusable spacecraft. Space Rider will be an un-crewed vehicle with high-tech capabilities that will provide access to space for scientific and commercial enterprises.
The six-engine jet that will be used to launch rockets into space took off from Mojave Airport in California last Saturday. The first flight of Stratolaunch lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes and reached 5,180 meters.
