NASA's X-59 jet has finally gone supersonic.

The X-59, a long-nosed demonstrator designed to help develop the tech required for "quiet" supersonic flight, notched the milestone on Friday (June 5), more than six months after getting off the ground for the first time.

"The X-59’s first supersonic flight is a testament to America's enduring leadership in science, engineering and aerospace innovation," Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement on Friday.

Friday's flight began and ended at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The X-59, with NASA test pilot Jim "Clue" Less at the yoke, took off at 2:08 p.m. EDT (1808 GMT; 11:08 a.m. local California time) and touched down 81 minutes later.

Less took the jet to a maximum altitude of 43,400 feet (13,228 meters) and a top speed of 713 mph (1,147 kph). That works out to about Mach 1.1, or 1.1 times faster than the speed of sound, NASA officials said in the statement. (The speed of sound varies with temperature, as sound waves move faster in warmer air. At sea level, where the air is relatively warm, Mach 1 is about 761 mph, or 1,225 kph.)

X-59 team members won't rest on their laurels, however. In just a few days, they plan to send the plane on its first "mission conditions" flight — one that reaches a top speed of Mach 1.4 and an altitude of about 55,000 feet (16,764 m).

"This speed and altitude are the base conditions for the X-59 when it will eventually fly over several U.S. communities, enabling NASA to gather data about how people may perceive its quiet thump," NASA officials wrote in the same statement.

"NASA will share this data with U.S. and international regulators to help establish new data-driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land," they added.

That market dried up in 1973, when the Federal Aviation Administration banned such flights to protect people and property from loud sonic booms.

The X-59, the centerpiece of NASA's Quesst ("Quiet Supersonic Technology") program, is designed to generate mild thumps rather than clapping booms. If all goes to plan, the work it's doing now could help bring widespread supersonic flight back to the U.S.

The X-59, which was built by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, has been quite active in the past few months, building up more and more flight hours.

"Since the aircraft’s first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, the team has made tremendous progress, flying 16 times in the last 90 days and getting into a steady test rhythm," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the same statement. "I'm grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio."

NASA's X-59 jet is on the verge of finally breaking the sound barrier.

The X-59 is a supersonic aircraft designed with a radical elongated geometry that aims to reduce the volume of the sonic booms it can create when breaking the sound barrier. NASA's goal with the X-59 is to help develop "quiet" supersonic technologies that could lead to aircraft designs that minimize the impact of sonic booms on the ground below, which could potentially enable current restrictions on supersonic flight to be lifted.

After making its first test flight in October 2025 and going on 14 test flights since March 2026, the X-59 is finally ready to take on its first supersonic flight sometime this month, NASA says. According to the agency, the aircraft will reach Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour or 1,489 kilometers per hour) at approximately 55,000 feet (16.7 kilometers). "What comes next is the first time this one-of-a-kind aircraft will fly supersonic," said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. "Completing the first mission-conditions flight is especially meaningful — it's the moment where we begin validating the aircraft in the environment it was designed for," Bahm said in a statement.

NASA recently completed several key milestones in the X-59 testing program ahead of this first supersonic flight attempt. Just last month, the jet retracted its landing gear for the first time, revealing how the aircraft will look when in full flight.

The X-59 has also recently pushed its speed as high as Mach 0.95, or around 627 mph (1,009 km/h) and made its first pair of test flights in a single day. Engineers and technicians working on the program now have a much better understanding of the aircraft and its unique systems.

One of the most unique features of the X-59 is what's known as its eXternal Vision System, or XVS. Because the nose of the X-59 is so elongated, pilots wouldn't be able to see what's in front of the aircraft out of a forward windscreen  — if it even had one.

The X-59 was designed without a forward windscreen at all, and instead uses a series of cameras that feed into an augmented reality display. Through the XVS, X-59 pilots get a view of what's in front of the aircraft with its nose completely removed from the picture.

The X-59 has so far been flying under what NASA refers to as "Phase 1" of its test program, which was designed to gauge the initial performance of the aircraft at low speeds and make sure it's airworthy. NASA has also been validating test instruments to help measure shockwaves the X-59 produces.

After making its first supersonic flight in upcoming tests, NASA will begin Phase 2 of the X-59 test campaign some time later in 2026.

That phase will be key for NASA's overall goal for the mission: reducing the impact of the sonic boom that is perceived on the ground below the aircraft as it flies over at above the speed of sound.

Supersonic flight has been prohibited above land within a certain distance of the U.S. since 1973 due to how disruptive the thunderous sonic booms are to people on the ground. NASA hopes the technologies developed for the X-59 can enable supersonic flight restrictions to be lifted over the continental U.S., paving the way for commercial supersonic flight once again.

"As we look ahead to the upcoming flights, we're poised to open the envelope even further — moving boldly toward the mission test point this aircraft was built to achieve," Bahm said in NASA's statement. "Flying supersonic and reaching these milestones isn't just progress; it's the realization of years of perseverance, innovation, and teamwork. Each step brings us closer to Phase 2, and to the future of commercial supersonic flight."

Aside from NASA, several private companies including Colorado's Boom Supersonic are developing aircraft capable of quieter supersonic flight. Boom Supersonic made its first successful supersonic flight last year, becoming the first civil aircraft to go supersonic over the continental United States.

Commercial supersonic flight would enable much faster travel times and could be a major boon to disaster relief, medical transport and more.

NASA's new supersonic X-59 jet took to the skies for the second time ever on Friday (March 20), but it didn't stay up for long.

The potentially revolutionary X-59 landed just nine minutes after takeoff on Friday, its sophomore effort cut short by a warning light in the cockpit.

"Despite the early landing, this is a good day for the team. We collected more data, and the pilot landed safely," Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA's Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, said in a statement on Friday. "We're looking forward to getting back to flight as soon as possible."

Civilian supersonic flights — those that go faster than the speed of sound — have been prohibited over the United States since 1973 due to the disruptive effects of sonic booms. (The speed of sound at sea level is about 761 mph, or 1,225 kph).

NASA hopes to help change that with the X-59, the centerpiece of its Quesst ("Quiet Supersonic Technology") mission. The long-nosed plane is designed to generate mere thumps rather than booms when it goes supersonic.

Using Quesst information, "new data-driven acceptable noise thresholds related to supersonic flight over land can be established, which would open the doors to new commercial cargo and passenger markets to provide faster-than-sound air travel," NASA officials wrote in a description of the program.

The 100-foot-long (30.5 meters) X-59 flew for the first time on Oct. 29, 2025, taking off from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. (The X-59 is a joint effort of NASA and Lockheed Martin.) That 67-minute debut went well, according to NASA: Pilot Nils Larson took it to a maximum altitude of 12,000 feet (3,660 m) and a top speed of 230 mph (370 kph), "precisely as planned."

NASA wanted to "expand the envelope" on the X-59's second flight, which was also expected to last about an hour. Pilot Jim "Clue" Less was supposed to hit those previous altitude and speed marks, then get the jet to 260 mph (418 kph) at 20,000 feet (6,100 m). But that didn't happen.

The X-59 took off from Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California on Friday at 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT; 10:54 a.m. local time) and landed safely just nine minutes later.

"The takeoff roll and liftoff was uneventful, and we were climbing out, getting ready to set up the first test point, when we got the warning, which required an immediate return to base," Less said during a press briefing on Friday afternoon.

"Although I had not intended to have to land quite as urgently for my first landing, the plane performed beautifully," he added.

It's too soon to say what caused the warning, Quesst team members said during the briefing. A caution — a level lower than a warning — also cropped up about an hour before liftoff involving a separate vehicle system, they added, but that didn't derail the flight attempt.

Both issues are under review, and there's no reason to be too concerned about either one, according to Less.

"This was just the beginning of a long flight-test campaign," he said. "We got data we didn't have before, and there's a lot of flights to come to gather a lot more data."

NASA's X-59 jet looks ready to fly into the sunset in this new image taken before its second test flight.

What is it?

The X-59 is an X-plane (experimental plane) built by NASA and Lockheed Martin to break the sound barrier without producing the typical thunderous sonic booms that accompany supersonic flight.

The "quiet' supersonic jet already made one test flight in October 2025, and is now readying for its second test flight. In this photo, technicians monitor the aircraft as it undergoes engine runs ahead of flight number two at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center near the historic Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

On its second flight, the X-59 will take off from Armstrong and land at Edwards after around an hour, during which it will reach a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet (6 kilometers) and a max speed of 260 mph (418 km/h). Future flight tests will "gradually take the X-59 faster and higher to ensure the aircraft’s safety and assess its performance," according to NASA.

Why is it amazing?

As seen in this photo, the X-59 features a radical elongated geometry and altered engine placement that shape the way air flows over the aircraft in an attempt to spread out the shockwaves it produces at supersonic speeds.

By spreading these shockwaves out over a larger area, the X-59's sonic booms are perceived as quieter by people on the ground below the X-59; NASA likens the booms it produces to a "thump," similar in volume to a car door slamming as heard from indoors.

Sonic booms can be quite loud and disturb people on the ground below. Because of how disruptive these booms can be, supersonic flight has been prohibited over the U.S. since 1973. But programs like the X-59 hope to change that by making supersonic flight less of a nuisance to people on the ground.

There are also new next-generation supersonic commercial aircraft in development, such as the Boom X-1. If supersonic flight is once again approved over the U.S., the shorter flight times it would enable would revolutionize travel and give a boost to industries that depend on rapid response times.

The U.S. military is developing a new experimental aircraft that looks a lot like a cruise missile, one that is also capable of launching its own missiles.

The new X-plane (X for "experimental") has officially received a U.S. Air Force designation and is now known as the X-68A. It is an uncrewed aerial vehicle (or UAV) that closely resembles a cruise missile, uncrewed self-propelled vehicles that fly long distances within Earth's atmosphere, typically with jet engines. But unlike cruise missiles, which typically possess an explosive munition (warhead), the X-68A is designed to launch from another aircraft and then launch air-to-air weapons of its own.

The aircraft is being developed by the LongShot program, a project helmed by the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that aims to give air forces a new capability that can increase the reach of fighter jets while keeping pilots out of harm's way. Col. John Casey, the DARPA program manager for LongShot, told Space.com that the program has been working to reduce the risks associated with deploying an aircraft from another aircraft. And according to Casey, the program is nearing its first flight. "We have been diligently maturing the system design and advancing towards flight test," Casey said.

Getting ready to fly

Before the X-68A can fly for the first time, the vehicle must undergo extensive testing. DARPA published a Feb. 17 statement that details the recent tests they've been working on for the experiment aircraft. A few of these include testing the X-68A inside a full-scale wind tunnel, as well as trials to see how the vehicle performs with parachute recovery and weapons-release systems.

Casey said these tests "demonstrate significant progress" for the X-plane's capability. "Since we began the program, we have made significant progress in the detailed design of a complex flight vehicle and its actuation mechanisms to go from a captive store to a flying vehicle," Casey said.

Essentially, the research team must ensure that the X-68A can leave its mothership safely, so there's no risk to the pilot who's flying the jet that carries it. They also need to make sure the X-68A can eject its own weapons while flying at a high speed.

The first test flights, which may happen as early as the end of this year, will prove "safe and effective employment of the X‑68A from an F-15 Eagle" and demonstrate the vehicle's ability to "safely eject a captive sub-munition," a spokesperson from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems wrote in a Feb. 19 announcement.

In other words, the flights will test the X-68A's ability to launch from another aircraft like a missile, and then launch its own missiles.

This concept of using vehicles that can be employed from another aircraft while it's in the air is intended to work with different kinds of aircraft, like fighters and bombers. DARPA calls this "host-platform agnostic."

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) acts as the military's research arm, often working on moonshot technologies that go on to have wide-ranging impacts in society. For example, DARPA previously helped design and develop the X-37, a reusable spacecraft that served as a precursor to the U.S. Space Force's X-37B.

A NASA research aircraft crashed in a fiery landing accident, but luckily none of the crew aboard the jet were harmed.

One of NASA's high-altitude WB-57 research jets skidded across the runway trailing fire and smoke behind it at Houston's Ellington Field on Tuesday (Jan. 27) after landing with its wheels up due to a mechanical issue. Video posted to social media by Houston Air Watch shows the plane making a landing on its belly. It's unclear what the mechanical issue may have been, but it appears to have affected the aircraft's landing gear.

NASA confirmed that all crewmembers are safe, according to Houston news outlet KHOU 11. Footage shows first responders helping the crew out of the cockpit after the plane came to a rest.

The agency is now looking into the mechanical issue that caused the hairy landing.

"Response to the incident is ongoing, and all crew are safe at this time," NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens posted on X on Tuesday. "As with any incident, a thorough investigation will be conducted by NASA into the cause. NASA will transparently update the public as we gather more information."

NASA owns three WB-57 aircraft, variants of the Martin B-57 Canberra that was first built as a bomber and high-altitude spy plane for the United States Air Force in 1953. The B-57 saw extensive use throughout the Vietnam War doing reconnaissance runs. The aircraft was designed to fly at altitudes as high as 63,000 feet (19 kilometers) with a range of 2,500 miles (4,000 km).

According to a NASA fact sheet, two of the agency's three WB-57s have been on hold for inspections; the one that crashed today is the only one to have flown recently. All three are based out of Ellington Field, located near the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Because its platform was designed to be a bomber, the WB-57 is capable of carrying heavy payloads — up to 8,800 lbs. (4,000 kilograms), according to NASA. That gives the jet versatility for conducting scientific experiments, such as studying solar eclipses.

In April 2024, a NASA WB-57 flew into the path of the sun to study the corona, its outer atmosphere. By doing so, the jet was able to experience over six minutes of totality, 25% more than anyone on the ground got to see. The jet carried a high-resolution, high-speed camera that measured the sun's corona in wavelengths ranging from infrared to visible light.

NASA just got a boost in its quest to unlock 'quiet' supersonic flight with a pair of retired F-15 jets from the U.S. Air Force.

The former fighter jets are the newest members of the agency's flight research fleet, which is headquartered at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California's Mojave Desert. The F-15s will now be used to support research flights of NASA's new X-59 'quiet' supersonic jet, an aircraft designed to fly at supersonic speeds without producing the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with breaking the sound barrier. If such an aircraft can be built and commercialized, it could dramatically decrease flight times across the continental U.S. and revolutionize several industries that depend on rapid response times.

The F-15 jets will be used to support the testing campaign X-59 and the overall mission. "These two aircraft will enable successful data collection and chase plane capabilities for the X-59 through the life of the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project," Troy Asher, director for flight operations at NASA Armstrong, said in an announcement. One of the jets will fly again as a NASA aircraft, now used for research. The other F-15 will be used for parts to help sustain the fleet. Both were delivered to NASA in December 2025.

NASA has previously used F-15s to carry sensors that measure air pressure differences caused by the shock waves produced by the X-59 as it breaks the sound barrier, and to fly researchers carrying Schlieren photography systems. These specialized cameras can detect changes in air pressure and allow scientists to visualize air flowing away from the X-59 as it flies.

NASA's plan is to modify one of the F-15 jets with new equipment and software, so that it can be specialized for research. Most commercial aircraft fly around 30,000 to 40,000 feet (9 to 12 km) above sea level, but the F-15 can maintain a much higher altitude.

Right now, the X-59 cruises at 55,000 feet (17 km) for its test flights, NASA says, and a specially outfitted F-15 jet can follow behind the X-59 at up to 60,000 (18 km) feet in order to collect important data for the mission.

These aircraft will continue a long tradition of using F-15s for research. "NASA has been flying F-15s since some of the earliest models came out in the early 1970s," Asher said. "Dozens of scientific experiments have been flown over the decades on NASA's F-15s and have made a significant contribution to aeronautics and high-speed flight research."

After numerous tests, X-59 flew for the first time in October last year, with Lockheed Martin, the X-59's manufacturer, saying the plane "performed exactly as planned."

If you're wondering what it looks like when an experimental supersonic aircraft zooms across the sky, check out this video, which tracks the X-59's historic first flight.

The U.S. Space Force is getting serious about drone threats.

Space Force is looking to boost its ability to deter and defeat uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Eastern Range, the 15-million-square-mile (39 million square kilometers) stretch of airspace over the Atlantic Ocean through which the United States launches most of its space missions. That's according to comments made by Col. Brian L. Chatman, director of the Eastern Range.

According to Breaking Defense, Chatman told attendees at the AI+ Space Summit in Washington, D.C. last week that Space Force is installing a new multi-million-dollar counter-UAS system at the Cape that will not only boost security forces' existing ability to track UAS, but also allow them to "engage those capabilities" when necessary. Chatman told Breaking Defense that, while security forces at the base currently have some ability to defeat drones in their airspace, the new system will offer "holistic coverage over the Cape, as opposed to pockets of coverage" that the base has today.

The new system will also involve testing new experimental technologies developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and National Reconnaissance Office, Chatman added. It's unclear what those might be. But any counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems, particularly experimental ones, are tricky in such a busy area.

With record numbers of rocket launches, and a fairly high-density airspace full of support aircraft of all types, any counter-drone systems must be carefully calibrated so as to not interfere with the communication, navigation or telemetry of rockets or other vehicles. Many C-UAS systems defeat drones by jamming or interfering with their radio transmissions or navigation systems, which has the potential to interfere with launch operations or other vehicles at the range.

Adding any new C-UAS systems will therefore be a balancing act, Chatman told Breaking Defense, adding that he wants to ensure these new capabilities will "protect and defend the Eastern Range, while not having second order effects that will impact other operations."

"As the research labs develop new capabilities, we're open to bringing them out, taking a look at what that would look like out on the Eastern Range, and then if we get to spectrum deconfliction, affording them the opportunity to come out and test those capabilities," Chatman said.

There are other ways to defeat drones, however, including using traditional weapons, blowing them out of the sky with other drones armed with explosive warheads, or simply ramming into them.

There is a clear need for a more robust C-UAS capability at American launch facilities. In January, Canadian national Xiao Guang Pan was charged with flying a drone over and photographing launch facilities and munitions bunkers at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. After taking a plea deal, the man was sentenced to 12 months of probation and deported from the United States.

Just months before, a Chinese citizen and lawful resident of California was arrested attempting to board a flight to China after using a drone to photograph facilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The man, Yinpin Zhao, was sentenced to four months in jail and deported.

Drone and UAS incursions have been reported at a large number of other U.S. military facilities in recent years, although in many cases, law enforcement agencies have been unable to attribute them to any particular group or actor  — at least publicly.

A stream of high-energy particles from a distant supernova explosion may have caused a packed passenger jet to suddenly lose altitude in late October, forcing an emergency landing.

The incident took place on Oct. 30 and involved a JetBlue Airbus A320 aircraft heading from Cancun, Mexico, to Newark in New Jersey. According to available reports, the aircraft suddenly dropped down in the air without an obvious reason while cruising above Florida. Although the pilots quickly regained control of the plane, at least 15 passengers were injured in the incident, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Tampa International Airport. Earlier this week, Airbus issued a statement attributing the incident to "intense solar radiation" which may have corrupted "data critical to the functioning of flight controls." The manufacturer subsequently grounded 6,000 A320s to roll out software updates to fix the vulnerability.

But there is a catch: Solar radiation levels on Oct. 30 were unremarkable and nowhere near levels that could affect aircraft electronics, Clive Dyer, a space weather and radiation expert at University of Surrey in the U.K., told Space.com. Instead, Dyer, who has studied effects of solar radiation on aircraft electronics for decades, thinks the onboard computer of the affected jet could have been struck by a cosmic ray, a stream of high-energy particles from a distant star explosion that may have travelled millions of years before reaching Earth.

"[Cosmic rays] can interact with modern microelectronics and change the state of a circuit," Dyer said. "They can cause a simple bit flip, like a 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. They can mess up information and make things go wrong. But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out."

Cosmic rays frequently arise when massive stars explode in supernovas at the end of their lives. The explosions accelerate streams of protons, hurling them across the universe at the speed of light. Cosmic rays batter Earth's atmosphere constantly, interacting with molecules of air and producing showers of exotic particles such as muons, high energy neutrons and positrons. As these particles rain down on Earth, they may hit an electronic circuit inside an aircraft sensor or onboard computer causing what researchers call a single-event upset.

Bursts of energy from the sun in the form of solar flares are also a source of such particles and can be dozens of times more energetic, or in extreme cases thousands of times, and therefore more damaging than particles from cosmic ray showers. When the sun gets active, incidents caused by single-event upsets in aircraft electronics may become more common.

In fact, less than two weeks after the JetBlue incident, potentially dangerous levels of solar radiation caused by a powerful solar flare persisted in the atmosphere at flight altitudes for several days. The Airbus software update therefore makes sense, even though, according to Dyer, solar activity couldn't have been responsible for the BlueJet accident.

"It's down to manufacturers to produce hardy electronics, especially in safety critical units," Dyer said. "A slight problem is that over 20 years, they've become complacent, because there have not been any [significant solar weather] events."

For Dyer, the effects of cosmic radiation on spacecraft and aircraft electronics are a life-long professional interest. In the 1980s, he was a part of a team that researched single-event upsets in spacecraft and later flew radiation monitors on the Concorde. He believes that single-event upsets in aircraft electronics due to cosmic rays, although rare, are not unprecedented.

In fact, Dyer thinks that a 2008 incident of the Quantas Flight 72 was likely produced by such a particle strike. Back then, the affected aircraft, an Airbus 330, nosedived twice on its own while cruising above the Pacific Ocean, creating brief spells of near weightlessness. Unfortunately, the passengers weren't prepared to be suddenly thrown in the air and many sustained serious injuries.

Dyer, who served as an advisor in the investigation at that time, said that although the incident was traced back to faults in the aircraft's electronic sensors, the investigation concluded without finding a definitive cause.

"They never got to the fundamental cause of the bit flip in the device," Dyer said. "It was left open, surprisingly."

With the sun being rather active lately, the chances of serious incidents caused by energetic solar flares are on the rise.

"You can get huge increases [in particle radiation] from the sun," said Dyer. "A thousand times higher than cosmic rays, and then many aircraft could be bothered by it."

The Airbus software update has certainly been needed, even though the JetBlue incident was unlikely caused by solar weather. Airbus has yet to respond to Space.com's request for comment at time of publication.

A new video gives us great looks at last month's historic first flight of NASA's new "quiet" X-59 supersonic jet.

NASA plans to use the X-59, an experimental vehicle, to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating sonic booms. The video was taken during the X-59's first flight on Oct. 28, which took off from Palmdale Regional Airport in California — on a runway shared by the airport and the adjacent U.S. Air Force (USAF) Plant 42 facility.

The video shows the X-59's extra-long nose gently bouncing as it taxis out of its shelter and heads toward at its runway in the orange-lit Mojave Desert. Combining views from the cockpit, a mission control area and from chase planes, the video brings views from takeoff, flight and touchdown — and the moment when NASA lead X-59 test pilot Nils Larson emerges from the cockpit to greet well-wishers. (Keep watching for a little surprise and humor near the end of the video.)

The X-59 is a collaboration between NASA and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin's historic Skunk Works facility in Palmdale. The debut flight went "exactly as planned," Lockheed representatives said in a statement published at the time of the flight. (The U.S. government was in shutdown when the flight happened, but certain critical activities were granted an exemption.)

"X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity. The American spirit knows no bounds. It's part of our DNA — the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before," Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in the same statement. "This work sustains America's place as the leader in aviation, and has the potential to change the way the public flies."

Work on the X-59 will continue at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, which is also at Palmdale. The jet is expected to continue testing through flights over microphones sprinkled around Mojave to measure the vibrations generated. Other aircraft will also measure its shockwaves using air sensors.

Supersonic flights above land in the U.S. have been prohibited since 1973, but if the X-59 can prove out its promises, it may help make commercial supersonic flight possible. Faster air travel would in turn generate a lift not only for commercial travelers but also for transport in case of medical emergency, disaster or military need.

Support for such speed comes directly from the White House, too, as President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this year directing the Federal Aviation Administration to examine how to lift the restrictions on U.S. supersonic flight.

Lockheed Martin and NASA aren't the only entities trying to make supersonic flight routine. Boom Supersonic's XB-1 jet made its own historic flight in January, also breaking the sound barrier over Mojave. The milestone marked the first time an independently developed commercial aircraft achieved such a milestone over the continental United States.

NASA's X-59 has finally taken flight.

The X-59 is NASA's experimental new jet built to break the sound barrier without generating the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with supersonic flight.

After taxiing out of the U.S. Air Force's (USAF) Plant 42 facility, the X-59 took off from the Palmdale Regional Airport in California today (Oct. 28) at 10:13 a.m. EDT (1413 GMT), according to aircraft tracker Flightradar24. The airport and USAF facility share a runway.

Videos and photos were posted to social media by aircraft spotters and photographers, showing the radically elongated X-59 taking off before flying north out of Palmdale. Photographer Jarod Hamilton caught the X-59 as it left the ground, making a steep climb into the air above the Mojave Desert.

NASA did not announce the flight publicly ahead of time. Following the flight, acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy praised the test flight in a Lockheed Martin statement. The X-59 was designed by NASA and built by Lockheed Martin at the company's storied Skunk Works facility in Palmdale.

"X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity. The American spirit knows no bounds. It's part of our DNA – the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before," Duffy said. "This work sustains America's place as the leader in aviation and has the potential to change the way the public flies."

Lockheed Martin's statement adds that the X-59 "performed exactly as planned" during its first flight.

Based on the X-59's track, it appears the X-plane flew oval-shaped "racetrack" patterns over the U.S. Air Force's Edwards Air Force Base for just over an hour before landing at the facility.

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center is located at the base. After this first flight, the X-59 will now reside at Armstrong, where it will undergo a testing campaign that will involve flying the jet over microphones placed throughout the desert and trailing other aircraft equipped with special air sensors through its shockwaves .

The X-59 was designed from the wheels up to be able to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing loud sonic booms, which can be disruptive to people on the ground below. Because of those booms, supersonic flight has been prohibited above land within a certain distance of the U.S. since 1973.

But NASA hopes to change that. If the X-59 can prove that "quiet" supersonic flight is possible, the restrictions on breaking the sound barrier above the populated U.S. could someday be lifted, allowing commercial supersonic flight. The high speeds of supersonic travel could also be a huge boon for disaster relief, medical transport and other industries.

To that end, President Trump issued an Executive Order earlier this year instructing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to begin taking steps to repeal the prohibition on supersonic flight over the United States.

Several U.S. companies are also innovating aircraft aimed at ushering in a new era of supersonic travel. In January 2025, Colorado-based Boom Supersonic's XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time, marking the first time an independently-developed commercial aircraft achieved supersonic flight over the continental United States.

Editor's note: This story was updated on Oct. 29 to include comment from acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy and Lockheed Martin.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Russia is targeting UK space infrastructure, and in particular military satellites, on a weekly basis, according to the head of UK Space Command.

In an interview with the BBC, Maj Gen Paul Tedman said that Russia was "shadowing" UK satellites. Shadowing involves orbiting and aligning a satellite close to the target satellite, in order to be near enough to jam communications or intercept signals to steal critical information.

Tedman said Russia's satellites had "payloads on board that can see our satellites and are trying to collect information from them". He also confirmed that jamming of UK military satellites was taking place.

This involves broadcasting signals on the same frequencies as those used by satellites, in order to intentionally disrupt or overwhelm legitimate signals. It does not physically damage spacecraft, so as soon as the jamming signal is no longer being emitted, communications can be restored. The jamming of satellite signals can take place from the ground, ocean or air, as well as from space.

But what about other tactics that could be used to disrupt satellites? One thing not mentioned in relation to the attacks on British military satellites, is the use of lasers. These can be deployed to dazzle satellites' onboard optical sensors. This can interfere with electronic circuity but would not cause lasting physical damage.

The most serious type of attack of course would be the use of a direct-ascent missile, which can be launched from the ground, sea or air, to destroy an orbiting satellite. Previous tests of this kind of anti-satellite (Asat) weapon have generated worrying levels of orbiting debris. This debris can then collide with other satellites, potentially generating even more debris for other space-based assets to avoid.

On February 24, 2022, the day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, satellite broadband users across Europe got a taste of the kind of attacks that the military is now used to. A cyber-attack was launched against Viasat's Ka-Sat satellite network, which supplies internet access to tens of thousands of people across Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Experts said they believed the purpose of the attack was to interrupt service rather than to access data or systems.

A recent talk by German IT researchers also revealed how much damage hackers could potentially do if given unfettered access to a satellite's onboard systems. The experts said that attackers could exploit vulnerabilities in open source software used by NASA and Airbus to control satellites. This in turn could give the intruders access to the control functions on a satellite, allowing them to change its orbit by sending a command to fire its thrusters.

Attacks don't need to target the satellite directly. Targeting control stations on the ground can also disrupt operation of the satellites in orbit. This can also have consequences for end users of a satellite service.

Wider problem

It’s not just the UK's satellites that are being targeted, however. In September, the head of French space command Maj Gen Vincent Chusseau said there had been a spike in hostile activity in space. Chusseau said activity had increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He said that adversaries, especially Russia, have diversified methods of disrupting satellites and that jamming, lasers and cyber-attacks have become commonplace.

The same month, Brig Gen Christopher Horner, commander of 3 Canadian Space Division told a space security summit that there were more than 200 anti-satellite weapons orbiting Earth.

While he didn't provide details on their nature, he said it was a "shocking number" to threaten allied satellites.

Increased investment

It's possible to satellites by improving the encryption of data transmitted to them as well as with anti-jamming technology. This uses a variety of techniques to block out or nullify the signals used by jammers to interfere with satellite communications. It’s also important to ensure there are alternative providers for critical space services as a backup in case of attack.

In response to increasing threats to UK satellite infrastructure, the UK government has recently increased its investment in projects geared towards space security. The government has invested £500,000 in a project to develop sensors that counter lasers used to blind satellites. The UK has also recently developed Borealis, a software platform designed to monitor and protect critical UK and allied satellites.

As well as investing in its own projects, the UK has also sought to improve space-based security by strengthening international partnerships. For instance, the UK recently invested €163 million (£141 million) in Eutelsat, which provides satellite internet and is a rival to Elon Musk's Starlink system.

Starlink’s importance not only for consumers, but also for military applications has been demonstrated in the Ukraine war – where Ukrainian troops had come to rely heavily on it for battlefield communications. But the drawback to this dependency on a privately owned company such as Starlink was highlighted when Musk denied coverage to Kyiv in 2023.

The investment in Eutelsat not only strengthens space-based collaboration between the UK and France, but also boosts a company providing a backup system for satellite communications.

The US and UK also recently conducted their first coordinated satellite maneuver. The US repositioned one of its own satellites to examine a UK satellite to make sure it was operating normally. Such a maneuver could potentially be used following an attack designed to disable a spacecraft.

The reports of Russian meddling highlight the importance of security in orbit as global tensions continue to expand into space.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

An increasing number of drones have been spotted around Denmark's airports in recent weeks. The most recent incidents around Aalborg and Billund airport caused considerable disruption followed as scheduled flights were prevented from landing or taking off.

These incidents follow several others, including at Copenhagen Airport. This is similar to the disruption that was experienced around London Gatwick airport in 2023, again causing widespread disruption.

In addition to drones being spotted around civilian airports, there have also been sightings around military airbases where the Danish F-16 and F-35 combat aircraft are based.

A civilian drone flights have been banned for a week in advance of a European Union summit in Copenhagen on October 1.

Given the widespread disruption that has been caused, questions are now being raised about what can be done to either suppress or destroy drones and prevent future attacks. There is also a risk to civilian aircraft from mid-air collisions with the drones and the potential for civilian deaths and injuries.

The Danish government has claimed that these most recent drone flights have been conducted by someone trying to spread fear among the Danish population. There have also been claims that they are part of wider Russian hybrid operations, which aims to disrupt Danish defense.

Suspicions of increased Russian activity has been fostered by an increasing number of incursions by drones into several other nations' airspace This is something that has been strenuously denied by the Kremlin.

Lasers, bullets and missiles

Ukrainian forces have used fishing nets to try to catch Russian drones deployed against their positions. Some drones have even been engineered to fire nets in a bid to snag other drones.

Another way of reducing or removing this relatively new threat is to directly shoot down the drones that are around the airspace of airports and airbases. This could potentially be done with combat aircraft, but also with high-powered lasers. But this is not as straightforward as it sounds.

One of the biggest challenges in taking this action is that it usually requires new legislation to be passed by national parliaments. Even with emergency legislation this can take time, meaning that it is not the immediate response to the threat that is clearly necessary. Similar legislation to that being considered by the Danish parliament was passed in the UK in 2018.

But once legislation has been passed the challenges do not end. Given the relatively small size of the drones causing the disruption, they can often be very difficult to target through traditional military means. Even if drones can be targeted, an additional risk is then posed – when a drone is shot out of the sky, there is little control over its trajectory as it falls to earth.

Once destroyed, it could easily land on airport infrastructure, on civilian property or in a worst-case scenario on people, causing injury or death.

Decisions whether to target drones causing this disruption must therefore be taken after a great deal of thought and consideration. But other methods are available and new technologies are being developed that may provide more effective solutions in the future.

Jamming technology

Instead of using so-called kinetic methods to physically destroy drones that are posing this problem, the use of jamming technology could be used to disrupt the communications link between the drone and the operator. As with kinetic attack, this response poses the challenge of what happens to the drone itself once the signal has been jammed and it falls out of the sky.

There are, however, several advantages to this approach. The first and most important advantage is that jamming can work for relatively long distances. This, disincentivizes further attacks as, in theory at least, any drone being flown cannot get within sufficient range to cause the level of disruption that has been seen in Denmark.

In addition to this, the lack of physical destruction from kinetic engagement means that, in theory at least, the drone can be recovered and information about its operation and whether it is a civilian or military asset can be discovered.

But using jamming technology to prevent drones from flying around civilian airports and military airbases has its own drawbacks. Jamming technology, as it is currently exists, cannot be targeted against individual aircraft. This means that any other aircraft within the vicinity of the airport or airbase where jamming technology is being used is also vulnerable to disruption. Due to this, closure of airspace would still be required to remove the threat of the drone, but this should be for a vastly reduced amount of time than is currently required.

There are, however, potential future technologies that might be incorporated into the defense of civilian airports and military airspaces. One such technology is currently being developed by the Royal Navy and has been named DragonFire. This uses the power of a long-range laser to physically destroy a drone in the sky from distances of up to three miles.

A further technology that is being developed by the British army, is jamming technology that can be directed on to targets with greater precision than is currently available outside of the British military.

These new technologies will take time to be widely used in civilian applications. So the sort of disruption we've been seeing lately will probably continue in the near future.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On July 18, 2025, NASA's experimental X-59 supersonic research aircraft basked in golden light on the ramp at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility before being put through a series of ground tests.

What is it?

The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is an experimental aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works for NASA, designed to achieve supersonic speeds with dramatically reduced noise, transforming the traditional sonic "boom" into a softer "thump."

Despite schedule delays in the early 2020s, the X-59 was delivered to NASA for flight testing in January 2025. Ground tests, including low-speed taxiing, began in mid-July, with a maiden flight expected later this year.

Where is it?

This photo was taken at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.

Why is it amazing?

Supersonic travel has long been restricted over land due to the disruptive noise of sonic booms. The X-59's design works to avoid this issue by dampening the sound, potentially allowing for future commercial supersonic travel over populated areas.

NASA plans to conduct community overflights and gather public perception data on these quieter sonic thumps. The feedback will then be shared with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and international regulators to inform updates to noise regulations.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about the X-59 supersonic jet and NASA's airplanes.

Supersonic commercial travel could soon be coming to the U.S. following a new executive order lifting a 52-year ban on overland commercial supersonic flights.

While supersonic flights could cross the Atlantic, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned overland commercial supersonic flights in 1973 in response to public pressure over noise concerns. The new executive order, issued on June 6, lifts that ban and lays out a timeline for the introduction of noise-based certification rules for supersonic flights.

This move could cut travel time between New York and Los Angeles almost in half, from six to just 3.5 hours.

Before the ban, the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union all pursued commercial applications for supersonic aviation technology. But each country’s supersonic aircraft created deafening, window-shattering sounds at ground level.

The Soviet Union's Tu-144 design, meanwhile, depended heavily on loud afterburners for the aircraft to reach Mach 1 (767 mph, or 1,235 km/h) — or faster than the speed of sound.

Today, companies like Boom Supersonic create "boomless cruise" where an aircraft can fly above 30,000 feet (9,100 meters), reach Mach 1 and produce no ground-level sounds — a phenomenon known as Mach cutoff. Boom's aircraft achieved this milestone in January 2025, when it completed a test flight that successfully propelled sonic booms upward, causing them to dissipate before reaching the ground.

Boom faces competition from Lockheed Martin and its research partner NASA in the form of their X-59 supersonic demonstrator jet. The X-59's design places the airplane's engines on top of the fuselage, helping to limit the shock waves, and the resulting noise, that reach ground level.

The regulatory timeline for this technology can be considered aggressive. The new directive calls for a repeal of prohibitions on supersonic flight by Dec. 3, establish noise certification standards by Dec. 6, 2026, and implementation of final rules by June 6, 2027.

By comparison, rulemaking for usage of commercial drones went from government mandate to final implementation in four years.

This story was provided by Live Science, a sister site of Space.com.

NASA's X-59 "quiet" supersonic jet continues to make its way toward the runway.

The X-59 was designed from the ground up to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with supersonic flight. The 99-foot (30-meter) aircraft features a radical elongated design, which eliminates a front windscreen; pilots instead see what's ahead through an augmented reality-enabled closed circuit camera system that NASA calls the External Vision System, or XVS.

This month, NASA took the experimental aircraft out for a drive, performing what are known as taxi tests. During these tests, NASA test pilot Nils Larson drove the X-59 across a runway at low speeds so crews could ensure the jet's steering and braking systems work as intended. Next, NASA and Lockheed Martin will perform high-speed taxi tests in which the X-59 will accelerate to close to the speed at which it will take off.

The taxi tests took place at the U.S. Air Force's Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California. The Air Force and its contractors use the plant to manufacture and test classified aircraft; the X-59 is being developed by Lockheed Martin, whose legendary "Skunk Works" facility is found at Plant 42.

Some of the U.S. military's most advanced aircraft were developed to some extent at Plant 42, including the F-22 Raptor, the B-2 Spirit, and the uncrewed RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone.

NASA's recently-retired SOFIA airborne observatory aircraft, the "flying telescope," also called Plant 42 home. The agency's space shuttles, the world's first reusable spacecraft, were also assembled and tested at the facility.

These taxi tests are only the most recent tests that have taken place over the last several months. Earlier this month, NASA teamed up with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to test a scale model of the X-59 in a supersonic wind tunnel in order to measure the noise produced beneath the aircraft.

Months prior, in May 2025, NASA fed data into the aircraft's computers that simulated being in flight, including experiencing failures. A month before that, NASA ran the X-59 through an "engine speed hold," similar to a car's cruise control, to ensure its engine can maintain a specific speed.

But 2025 began with the most photogenic of all: afterburner tests, during which extra fuel was injected into the aircraft's hot exhaust.

If the X-59's upcoming tests continue to be successful, NASA will soon conduct a flight test campaign that will see the jet fly over selected populated areas to collect data on how the aircraft's quieter sonic "thumps" are perceived on the ground.

The ultimate goal is to develop technologies that can help bring supersonic flight back to the continental United States. Commercial supersonic flight has been banned for decades because of how disruptive the associated sonic booms can be.

If the X-59 and other supersonic aircraft can find ways to mitigate these loud sonic booms, supersonic flight could indeed return, greatly reducing flight times for civilian travel, disaster response, medical transport and other applications.

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, the first human to break the sound barrier with his body during a leap from the stratosphere, is dead at 56.

Baumgartner died Wednesday (July 16) during a paragliding flight in coastal Italy, according to an Associated Press report citing an Italian official.

The paraglider crashed into a swimming pool edge in Porto Sant'Elpidio, AP's report added; Italian media reports cited by English-language outlets disagree as to the cause, and whether others were injured.

Baumgartner, a long-time skydiver and extreme sports enthusiast, reached world fame on Oct. 14, 2012 after skydiving 128,000 feet (39 km) from a tiny capsule suspended under a high-altitude balloon.

"I know the whole world is watching now, and I wish the world could see what I see," Baumgartner said in a Red Bull livestream of the event, before stepping out the door of his capsule. "And sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you really are."

As he plunged from an altitude three times higher than commercial flight routes, Baumgartner's body tumbled and spun in the thin air before he righted himself, popped a parachute and landed safely in the New Mexico desert. Baumgartner's record-breaking flight was superseded in 2014 when Google executive Alan Eustace made his own jump from nearly 136,000 feet (41 km).

Red Bull, who sponsored Baumgartner's jump, paid tribute to Baumgartner's life on Instagram after his death. "Felix was 'born to fly' and was determined to push the limits," the post noted, but added he did so judiciously: "He was also smart, professional, thorough and meticulous, never leaving anything to chance."

Baumgartner was born in Salzburg in 1969, the same year that humans first landed on the moon during Apollo 11. He started skydiving at 16, gaining experience through Austrian military's demonstration and competition team. He then began performing skydiving exhibitions for Red Bull at age 19, according to his official website.

By 1996, when Baumgartner was about 27, he wanted to start base jumping, or skydiving from towers and similar high objects. He achieved some fame outside of his field in 1999 after leaping from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Baumgartner's base-jumping teacher, Tracy Lee Walker, "not only taught me how to base jump, but also how to deal with risks, and the importance of very careful and thorough planning," Baumgartner said in an interview decades later, for his aviation enthusiast group

Baumgartner leaves behind his long-time partner, Mihaela Rădulescu, according to several media reports.

What is it?

NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft was developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for the space agency's Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator project. Through the use of a long, narrow airframe and canards, the X-59 is able to reduce the noise that reaches the ground from sonic booms generated as the aircraft crosses the speed of sound.

The X-59's cockpit, ejection seat and canopy come from a T-38 "Falon" training jet and the landing gear from an F-16 "Falcon" fighter jet. The research aircraft (X-plane) is 100 feet long (30.4 meters) and has a 29.5-foot (9-meter) wingspan.

Powered by a General Electric F-414 engine, the X-59 is projected to reach a maximum speed of Mach 1.5 or 990 mph (1,590 km/h), and cruise at Mach 1.42 or 940 mph (1,510 km/h) at 55,000 feet (16,800 meters).

Where is it?

Though the X-59 thought it was high above the ground during the simulation tests, it was actually parked at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.

Why is it amazing?

"The idea behind these tests is to command the airplane's subsystems and flight computer to function as if it is flying," said Yohan Lin, the X-59's lead avionics engineer at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in an interview with NASA.

During the testing, engineers turned on most of the aircraft's systems but left the engine off. The flight computer still had control over the X-59's control surfaces, responding to inputs that simulated changes in altitude, speed, temperature or the health of its various systems.

"These were simple maneuvers, nothing too crazy," Lin said. "We would then inject failures into the airplane to see how it would respond. Would the system compensate for the failure? Was the pilot able to recover?"

Historically, this work is known as "iron bird" testing, named for a simple metal frame on which representations of the aircraft's subsystems are installed, connected and checked out. Since the X-59 is a one-of-a-kind, officials decided it was better and less expensive to use the aircraft itself.

As such, the series of exercises was dubbed "aluminum bird" testing, since that's the primary metal comprising the X-59.

Want to learn more?

You can read about the X-59's earlier tests, including a "cruise control" trial and electromagnetic interference testing on the ground. You can also see photos from its afterburner tests.

A California man has been sentenced to jail for flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base and photographing the installation.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, Yinpiao Zhou of Brentwood, California flew a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base on Nov. 30, 2024 for nearly an hour and took 13 photographs of the facility. Vandenberg security forces used detection systems at the base to track the drone to a park close to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away, where law enforcement found Zhou attempting to hide the drone in his jacket, a court affidavit states.

This week, Zhou was sentenced to four months in prison, which he has already served, with a year of supervised release to follow. In addition, Zhou will be required to pay $225 in fines, according to the Orange County Register.

Zhou is a Chinese citizen and a lawful permanent resident of the United States. Authorities arrested him at the San Francisco International Airport as he was attempting to board a flight to China, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The Justice Department also stated that Zhou's mobile phone showed he had previously searched for "Vandenberg Space Force Base Drone Rules" and had "messaged with another person about hacking his drone to allow it to fly higher than it could otherwise."

Zhou's arrest was made just weeks after the U.S. Space Force oversaw the launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg on Nov. 6. 2024.

Drone incursions over sensitive U.S. military facilities have been increasing in recent years, although the U.S. government has yet to publicly attribute them to any particular group or actor.

NASA and Boom Supersonic just released an incredible photo capturing a shockwave emanating from the dark silhouette of the supersonic XB-1 aircraft while it traveled in front of the sun during a Feb. 10 test flight during which it broke the sound barrier three times.

"This image makes the invisible visible — the first American made civil supersonic jet breaking the sound barrier," Blake Scholl, Boom Supersonic founder and CEO, said in a statement.

The photo was no accident. It required ideal conditions and perfect timing. Chief test pilot Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg cut a path to a precise spot over the Mojave Desert while NASA snapped the shot.

"Thanks to Geppetto's exceptional flying and our partnership with NASA, we were able to capture this iconic image," Scholl continued.

The photo is a Schlieren image. Developed in 1864 by German physicist August Toepler to study supersonic motion, Schlieren photography is used in today's aeronautical engineering. The method can reveal how light bends around differences in air pressure during supersonic flight.

The XB-1 team made software using NASA data to guide the pilot on a path where the aircraft could eclipse the sun. When the XB-1 entered the right spot, NASA got the photograph using ground telescopes with special filters that detect air distortions. That's why the shockwaves around the aircraft are visible in the photograph.

NASA also gathered sound data from the test flight. Boom Supersonic analyzed the data and found that no audible sonic boom reached the ground. This is notable, because supersonic flights that make sonic booms over populated areas in the U.S. are prohibited.

Boom Supersonic plans to make a supersonic airplane with a sonic boom that won't disturb people on the ground. This airplane would reduce cross-country flight times. "We confirmed that XB-1 made no audible sonic boom," Scholl said in the same statement, "which paves the way for coast to coast flights up to 50% faster."

The Feb. 10 test flight was the final one for XB-1. Now Boom Supersonic will take what they learned from the tests and start building a supersonic airliner called Overture.

Last year, Boom Supersonic finished building its super factory in Greensboro, North Carolina which will eventually pump out 66 Overture aircraft per year, starting with half that initially. United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines already have orders and pre-orders in for the supersonic airliner.

NASA's experimental X-59 aircraft continues to make progress toward its first flight with a new successful round of testing.

The X-59 "quiet" supersonic jet was designed to break the sound barrier without producing the thunderous sonic booms that typically accompany supersonic flight. And based on the results of the vehicle's latest tests, conducted at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, the X-59 might accomplish that feat soon.

NASA and Lockheed Martin, the latter of which built the X-59, recently put the aircraft through electromagnetic interference testing on the ground. The goal was to ensure its onboard sensors, radio and navigation equipment do not interfere with one another. According to NASA engineers, the X-59 passed with flying colors.

"Reaching this phase shows that the aircraft integration is advancing," said Yohan Lin, NASA's X-59 avionics lead, in an agency statement. "It's exciting to see the progress, knowing we've cleared a major hurdle that moves us closer to X-59's first flight."

During the tests, NASA not only activated the X-59's avionics and sensor systems to ensure they didn't interfere with one another, but also to look for any signs that these systems could affect systems on other research aircraft that will fly behind the X-59 during test flights.

For instance, the agency plans to fly an F-15D jet behind the X-59. This aircraft will be equipped with a specially-designed air probe meant to help measure shockwaves the supersonic jet produces during flight.

"It's called a source-victim test — essentially, we activate one system and monitor the other for issues like noise, glitches, faults, or errors," Lin said.

As such, during the recent tests, NASA staged an F-15D just 47 feet (14 meters) from the X-59 to "confirm there's compatibility between the two aircraft, even at close proximity," Lin said.

After that, the F-15D and X-59 were further separated on the ground to sit at a distance of 500 feet (152 meters) from one another, which simulated the conditions in which they will fly together.

"You want to make discoveries of any potential electromagnetic interference or electromagnetic compatibility issues on the ground first,” Lin said. "This reduces risk and ensures we're not learning about problems in the air."

Now that the X-59 has cleared electromagnetic interference testing, engineers will test its avionics and telemetry systems by feeding it data while on the ground to simulate what it might experience during flight.

To create an aircraft that can break the sound barrier while producing only a "thump" that can be heard on the ground below, NASA and Lockheed Martin gave the X-59 a unique, elongated geometry and placed the engine right on top of the aircraft.

Because of its long nose, the radical-looking X-59 doesn't feature a forward-looking windscreen. To see in front of it, pilots will instead use an augmented reality display that feeds views from cameras into screens in the cockpit.

During testing, NASA will fly the X-59 over populated areas in the U.S. to study how its quieter supersonic "thump" is perceived by people on the ground. Supersonic flight above populated areas has been prohibited for decades due to the disruptions that sonic booms can cause — but, if successful, the X-59 could someday pave the way for quieter supersonic passenger aircraft.

Boom Supersonic's XB-1 jet went out in style on Monday (Feb. 10).

The XB-1 broke the sound barrier three times during its 13th and final test flight, which lifted off Monday from the Mojave Air & Space Port in southeastern California at about 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT; 10:50 a.m. local time in California).

"This is really a bittersweet day for for me, and I think for the entire XB-1 team," Boom Supersonic Founder and CEO Blake Scholl said during the company's webcast of the flight. "This is the last time that she'll fly," he added, after a pause during which it sounded like he got a bit choked up.

The XB-1 is a piloted pathfinder vehicle designed to pave the way for Overture, Boom's planned commercial supersonic jet. The demonstrator is about one-third the size of Overture, which will seat 64 to 80 passengers.

Related: Boom Supersonic XB-1 jet breaks sound barrier on historic test flight (video)

The XB-1 lifted off for the first time in March 2024, on a flight that did not break the sound barrier (which is about 767 mph, or 1,234 kph, at sea level). The demonstrator flew 10 more subsonic flights, then went supersonic for the first time on Jan. 28 of this year.

Boom's chief test pilot, Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg, broke the sound barrier three times during that landmark flight, which marked the first time a civil aircraft had ever gone supersonic over the continental United States.

Boom and Brandenburg repeated that feat during Monday's sortie, which lasted about 41 minutes from liftoff to touchdown back at Mojave.

"We have achieved here with this flight test program what everyone thought previously was impossible — that a startup cannot do a supersonic airplane by themselves, without the help of the government, without the help of the larger OEM [original equipment manufacturer] organizations," Nick Sheryka, Boom's chief flight test engineer, said during Monday's livestream.

"What we have done now, six times, is shown the world that we can design, develop, test — safely — a supersonic airplane," he added.

Colorado-based Boom aims to bring back supersonic commercial flight, a feat pioneered by the British-French Concorde, which flew for the final time in 2003. Monday's successful flight took the company a big step closer to making that happen.

"While it's incredibly sad for me to leave the exciting world of flight testing experimental aircraft, it means we get to go all in, starting tomorrow, on what we started the company to do, which is to build that Overture airliner," Scholl said.

Boom aims to lock in Overture's overall design in just a week or so and to do the same with the jet's Symphony engines next month, he added.

"Our goal is to be making thrust on those engines around the end of this year, start building the first Overture in about 18 months, roll it off the line in about three years [and] put it in the air in less than four," Scholl said. "Our goal is to be ready for passengers by the end of 2029."

None of the three sonic booms generated by the XB-1 on Monday were audible from the ground, which helps to explain why Boom is so confident that supersonic passenger flight can come back. (Frequent, loud booms heard over large cities, after all, would be a significant hurdle for operators to overcome.)

There's a "cutoff altitude" above which audible sonic boom waves will refract upward off layers in the atmosphere. That altitude depends on properties such as temperature gradients and winds, Scholl and Sheryka explained in the livestream. On Monday, the cutoff altitude was about 7,000 feet (2,134 meters).

"Below that, you won't hear it," Sheryka said.

Boom Supersonic made history today (Jan. 28) when its XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time.

Boom Supersonic's chief test pilot Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg took off in the company's XB-1 jet from the storied Mojave Air & Space Port in California this morning under mostly clear skies. Some 11.5 minutes into the flight — the 12th overall for the XB-1 — at an altitude of around 35,000 feet (10,668 meters), the test plane exceeded Mach 1, the speed of sound, marking the first time a civil aircraft has gone supersonic over the continental United States.

"This is such a huge step, building the first civil supersonic jet, you know, right here in America," said Boom advisor and former Chief Engineer Greg Krauland during the company's livestream on X. "This jet really does have much of the enabling technologies that are going to enable us to go ahead and to build a commercial supersonic airliner that is available to the masses."

The XB-1 went supersonic two additional times during the flight, at about 17 and 22 minutes after takeoff, to allow pilots to test the jet's handling performance during supersonic flight. The size of the experimental airspace for today's flight limited how long the jet was able to fly above Mach 1.

"I'm just to-the-moon excited about how well that went," Krauland said during today's livestream.

The flight was filmed and monitored by two different chase planes, a Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet, and a Northrop T-38 Talon, the same aircraft NASA uses to train its astronauts.

The XB-1 landed roughly 30 minutes after liftoff on its bespoke landing gear, designed specifically for the aircraft.

Today's test flight was livestreamed using broadband internet beamed to Earth from SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation. A Starlink Mini unit was installed in the T-38 chase plane used in today's test flight, enabling unprecedented live video of the aviation milestone.

"We're getting broadband speeds, you know, at point eight Mach [at] 31,000 feet ... The capability that is brought to the game of flight test has been pretty incredible, actually — very surprised by the capability," Boom Supersonic Chief Flight Test Engineer Nick Sheryka said during the company's livestream.

The XB-1 is a technology demonstrator, meaning Boom Supersonic is testing it in order to validate the design and subsystems of the jet to pave the way for the company's Overture passenger aircraft.

Overture is a planned 64-to-80 seat supersonic aircraft that Boom Supersonic hopes can become the first passenger jet to fly faster than the speed of sound since the British-French Concorde, which made its last flight in 2003.

Colorado-based Boom Supersonic already has over 100 orders for Overture from major airliners worldwide. The company hopes to help return supersonic airliners to service, potentially cutting flight times in half.

Editor's note: Boom Supersonic successfully broke the sound barrier with the XB-1 today in a major milestone. Read our coverage here.

Boom Supersonic plans to break the sound barrier during a test flight this morning (Jan. 28). This would mark the first time the company achieves the feat, and you can watch the historic action live.

Colorado-based Boom's XB-1 test vehicle is scheduled to lift off on its 12th test flight from California's Mojave Air & Space Port today at around 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 8 a.m. local California time). If all goes well, the piloted demonstrator craft will exceed Mach 1 — the speed of sound — about 25 minutes later.

The XB-1 is a subscale pathfinder vehicle, designed to demonstrate technologies and capabilities that Boom plans to employ a few years from now on a commercial jet called Overture.

If all goes according to plan, the 64-seat Overture will become the first supersonic passenger jet since the British-French Concorde, which was retired in 2003.

The XB-1 first got off the ground in March 2024. The test vehicle has flown 11 times to date, breaking new ground on each liftoff. For example, during its most recent flight, which occurred on Jan. 10, the XB-1 nosed right up to the edge of the sound barrier, reaching Mach 0.95.

Flight 12, however, will be momentous, according to Boom Founder and CEO Blake Scholl. In a Jan. 25 X post, Scholl called the mission "supersonic flight's 'Falcon 1' moment," referring to SpaceX's first-ever successful launch — a September 2008 liftoff of the company's small Falcon 1 rocket.

"It will still be a few years before we welcome the return of the first supersonic passenger. Success is far from guaranteed. Yet, there's more reason than ever to be excited and optimistic," Scholl wrote in another Jan. 25 X post.

Today's livestream should feature some dramatic in-flight views, which will come down to Earth via SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet service.

"We're livestreaming the flight from our chase aircraft, a Northrop T-38. We've installed a Starlink Mini antenna in the T-38 so everyone can see the flight in real-time," Boom wrote in a Jan. 25 X post.

NASA's X-59 supersonic jet looks ready for some serious speed in new photos.

Lockheed Martin has been building the X-59 for NASA, as part of a project to develop a "quiet" supersonic aircraft that can break the sound barrier without producing the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with faster-than-sound flight.

Both NASA and Lockheed Martin recently released photos of the X-59 "quiet" supersonic jet conducting tests of its afterburner, a system that injects extra fuel into the hot exhaust of a jet engine. "The X-59 — precision, power and engineering excellence, all on full display," Lockheed Martin said in a post on X accompanying a new photo of the aircraft.

In the new photos, the X-59 sits in a hangar at Lockheed Martin's storied Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California while performing afterburner engine run tests.

The tests were aimed at verifying the performance of the X-59's General Electric F414-GE-100 jet engine, a modified version of the engine used in Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet flown by the U.S. Navy.

"Running the engine, an F414-GE-100, with afterburner will allow the X-59 to meet its supersonic speed requirements. The test demonstrated the engine's ability to operate within temperature limits and with adequate airflow for flight," NASA wrote in a statement in December 2024 along with a photo of an afterburner test.

The tests also verified how well the engine performed with the other subsystems on the aircraft, the agency added.

When NASA and Lockheed Martin complete ground testing and verify the X-59's flight readiness, the jet will begin flight testing. During the flight test campaign, NASA will fly F-15s behind the X-59 equipped with specially designed air probes that will measure the shockwaves produced as the X-59 breaks the sound barrier.

From there, the agency plans to fly the X-59 over select residential areas in the United States in order to gather data on the public's reaction to and perception of the quieter "thumps" it produces when in supersonic flight.

The X-59 was developed as part of NASA's Quesst program (Quiet SuperSonic Technology), which aims to develop aircraft that can break the sound barrier without producing thunderous sonic booms.

Supersonic flight over populated areas has been prohibited for decades because of how disruptive the booms are to the public on the ground. If successful, programs such as Quesst could help get supersonic flight approved once again for commercial purposes, greatly reducing flight time for a wide range of civilian applications.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Marcos Fernandexz Tous is a professor of aerospace technology at the University of North Dakota.

Off the coast of Baja California in December 2022, sun sparkled over the rippling sea as waves sloshed around the USS Portland dock ship. Navy officials on the deck scrutinized the sky in search of a sign. The glow appeared suddenly.

A tiny spot at first, it gradually grew to a round circle falling at a great speed from the fringes of space. It was NASA’s Orion capsule, which would soon end the 25-day Artemis I mission around and beyond the moon with a fiery splashdown into the ocean.

Orion's reentry followed a sharply angled trajectory, during which the capsule fell at an incredible speed before deploying three red and white parachutes. As the mission finished its trip of over 270,000 miles (435,000 kilometers), it looked to those on the deck of the USS Portland like the capsule had made it home in a single piece.

As the recovery crew lifted Orion to the carrier's deck, shock waves ruffled across the capsule’s surface. That’s when crew members started to spot big cracks on Orion’s lower surface, where the capsule’s exterior bonds to its heat shield.

But why wouldn’t a shield that has endured temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) sustain damage? Seems only natural, right?

This mission, Artemis I, was uncrewed. But NASA's ultimate objective is to send humans to the moon in 2026. (The target is now 2027.) So, NASA needed to make sure that any damage to the capsule– even its heat shield, which is meant to take some damage – wouldn’t risk the lives of a future crew.

On Dec. 11, 2022 – the time of the Artemis I reentry – this shield took severe damage, which delayed the next two Artemis missions. While engineers are now working to prevent the same issues from happening again, the new launch date targets April 2026, and it is coming up fast.

As a professor of aerospace technology, I enjoy researching how objects interact with the atmosphere. Artemis I offers one particularly interesting case – and an argument for why having a functional heat shield is critical to a space exploration mission.

Taking the heat

To understand what exactly happened to Orion, let’s rewind the story. As the capsule reentered Earth’s atmosphere, it started skimming its higher layers, which acts a bit like a trampoline and absorbs part of the approaching spacecraft’s kinetic energy. This maneuver was carefully designed to gradually decrease Orion's velocity and reduce the heat stress on the inner layers of the shield.

After the first dive, Orion bounced back into space in a calculated maneuver, losing some of its energy before diving again. This second dive would take it to lower layers with denser air as it neared the ocean, decreasing its velocity even more.

While falling, the drag from the force of the air particles against the capsule helped reduced its velocity from about 27,000 miles per hour (43,000 kilometers per hour) down to about 20 mph (32 kph). But this slowdown came at a cost – the friction of the air was so great that temperatures on the bottom surface of the capsule facing the airflow reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

At these scorching temperatures, the air molecules started splitting and a hot blend of charged particles, called plasma, formed. This plasma radiated energy, which you could see as red and yellow inflamed air surrounding the front of the vehicle, wrapping around it backward in the shape of a candle.

No material on Earth can stand this hellish environment without being seriously damaged. So, the engineers behind these capsules designed a layer of material called a heat shield to be sacrificed through melting and evaporation, thus saving the compartment that would eventually house astronauts.

By protecting anyone who might one day be inside the capsule, the heat shield is a critical component.

In the form of a shell, it is this shield that encapsulates the wide end of the spacecraft, facing the incoming airflow – the hottest part of the vehicle. It is made of a material that is designed to evaporate and absorb the energy produced by the friction of the air against the vehicle.

The case of Orion

But what really happened with Orion’s heat shield during that 2022 descent?

In the case of Orion, the heat shield material is a composite of a resin called Novolac – a relative to the Bakelite which some firearms are made of – absorbed in a honeycomb structure of fiberglass threads.

As the surface is exposed to the heat and airflow, the resin melts and recedes, exposing the fiberglass. The fiberglass reacts with the surrounding hot air, producing a black structure called char. This char then acts as a second heat barrier.

NASA used the same heat shield design for Orion as the Apollo capsule. But during the Apollo missions, the char structure didn’t break like it did on Orion.

After nearly two years spent analyzing samples of the charred material, NASA concluded that the Orion project team had overestimated the heat flow as the craft skimmed the atmosphere upon reentry.

As Orion approached the upper layers of the atmosphere, the shield started melting and produced gases that may have escaped through pores in the material. Then, when the capsule gained altitude again, the outer layers of the resin froze, trapping the heat from the first dive inside. This heat vaporized the resin.

When the capsule dipped into the atmosphere the second time, the gas expanded before finding a way out as it heated again – kind of like how a frozen lake thaws upward from the bottom – and its escape produced cracks in the capsule’s surface where the char structure got damaged. These were the cracks the recovery crew saw on the capsule after it splashed down.

In a Dec. 5, 2024, press conference, NASA officials announced that the Artemis II mission will be designed with a modified reentry trajectory to prevent heat from accumulating.

For Artemis III, which is planned to launch in 2027, NASA intends to use new manufacturing methods for the shield, making it more permeable. The outside of the capsule will still get very hot during reentry, and the heat shield will still evaporate. But these new methods will help keep the astronauts cozy in the capsule all the way through splashdown.

Chonglin Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of North Dakota, assisted in researching this article. Read the original article.

NASA is planning to fly its F-15B jets through supersonic shock waves in order to help test its revolutionary X-59 jet.

When aircraft break the sound barrier, they produce shock waves that reverberate through the surrounding air and produce the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with supersonic flight. The X-59, developed by Lockheed Martin and NASA, was designed with a radical new geometry that could help reduce these booms down to a much quieter "thump."

To help the agency measure these thumps, NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center is planning to fly an F-15B research aircraft behind the X-59 during supersonic flight, carrying two specially designed probes that will collect "precise pressure data" about the X-59's shock waves, according to a NASA statement. The agency says this "follow-the-leader" arrangement will allow scientists to analyze data from shock waves in real time just behind where the X-59 will produce them.

Small ports, or holes, on the probes will measure air pressure, speed and direction during flight, collecting thousands of samples per second. These measurements will allow NASA scientists to compare what they observe during the X-59's test flights to data from simulations and models.

"A shock-sensing probe acts as the truth source, comparing the predicted data with the real-world measurements," said Mike Frederick, NASA's lead investigator for the probes that will fly on the agency's F-15Bs, in the agency's statement.

One of the probes mounted on an F-15B will measure the near-field shockwaves produced close behind the X-59 while in flight, while another "mid-field probe" will be used in later testing to measure shock wave data closer to the ground.

To aid in the X-59 test campaign, NASA has also been flying its F-15D Eagle and F/A-18 Hornet support aircraft over microphones set up throughout test airspace near its Armstrong Flight Research Center in the western Mojave Desert.

The agency is "learning to listen to the X-59" with these flights, which see the jets perform inverted (upside-down) dives that produce "softer" sonic booms. These recordings will be later compared against recordings of the sonic booms expected to be produced by the X-59.

The X-59 is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating the thunderous sonic booms that are typically produced during supersonic flight. Those booms are the reason supersonic flight above land within a certain distance of the U.S. have been prohibited since 1973.

If the technologies and concepts being tested with the X-59 successfully reduce the noise produced by breaking the sound barrier, we could someday see supersonic planes approved once again for commercial air travel, revolutionizing not only civilian flight but also disaster relief and medical transport.

After years of development and delays stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, the X-59 was unveiled to the public at a glitzy ceremony in January 2024. The aircraft passed its Flight Readiness Review four months later and fired its engine for the first time in November 2024.

A date has not yet been set for the jet's first test flight.

A new type of flying car could soon be ferrying passengers through the skies using a novel propulsion technology, engineers say.

On Nov. 5, CycloTech, an Austrian company that builds flying car components, unveiled blueprints for its new "BlackBird" demonstrator aircraft — a flying car that uses a custom-made alternative to propellers.

Dubbed the "CycloRotor," this all-electric propulsion system is based on the principle of the Voith Schneider propeller (VSP) — which is frequently used on tug boats and ferries, CycloTech chief technology officer Tahsin Kart said in a promotional video. It's a circular rotor with small propeller blades inside, which spin around and can be used for both propulsion and steering.

By moving the center around which the propeller blades spin, the aircraft can change its airspeed and direction, CycloTech representatives said in a statement. Each propeller blade can also be angled to produce directional thrust, like the wing of an aircraft, and can be precisely aligned to send the aircraft in specific directions or rotate mid-air.

The CycloRotors will greatly enhance the BlackBird demonstrator's maneuverability, enabling it to move or spin in any direction while airborne and also perform sharp corrections to its trajectory with added precision, CycloTech representatives said in the statement. This can also improve the comfort and safety of passengers on any flight in windy or other inclement weather conditions, they added.

This technology sets BlackBird apart from electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, such as those being tested by DARPA, as well as prototype air taxis — all of which use more traditional propeller designs.

The Blackbird demonstrator is still in development, but CycloTech released several promotional videos showing the CycloRotor technology being used to levitate and propel scale models.

At present, the model can support a maximum of 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and can fly at around 73 mph (118 km/h). This is almost half that of a Skyhawk Cessna, one of the most popular private light aircraft options on the market, which can max out at 142 mph (229 km/h).

The team behind the BlackBird demonstrator aims to fly a full-size version of the aircraft in early 2025.

A new celestial navigation system designed for drones could make them harder to detect by eliminating the need for GPS signal emissions.

Scientists from the University of South Australia have developed a new navigation system that allows uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) — or drones, as they're more commonly known — to sense their location based on the stars in the night sky.

Such a system could make drones harder to detect and more resistant to jamming attacks that deny or disrupt GPS signals, one of the most common forms of long-distance navigation and positioning.

Celestial navigation, as this technique is known, has been used by humanity for thousands of years. Aircraft and spacecraft have used similar systems for decades, but this new system is designed to be low-cost and lightweight enough to be used on smaller drones, according to the researchers developing it.

"Unlike traditional star-based navigation systems, which are often complex, heavy and costly, our system is simpler, lighter and does not need stabilization hardware, making it suitable for smaller drones," said Samuel Teague of the University of South Australia (UniSA), in a statement.

The new system combines visual observations of the stars with standard autopilot technologies. In tests of the system using a fixed-wing UAV, researchers were able to pinpoint the drone's position within 2.5 miles (4 kilometers).

Such a capability could be used to operate drones in areas where GPS signals are jammed or degraded due to electronic warfare. This type of warfare targets the electromagnetic spectrum, through which radio signals and other emissions pass.

The researchers behind this new celestial navigation system say it could help not only with military missions, but also in peacetime operations like Earth observation.

"We have developed a navigation method that’s resilient, independent of external signals, and achievable with low-cost, easily accessible components. This makes it applicable to a variety of UAVs, from commercial drones to more advanced defense applications," UniSA scientist Javaan Chahl said in the statement.

"For instance, in environmental monitoring over remote locations or long-endurance surveillance missions where GPS might be unavailable or compromised, this technology offers a valuable new capability," Chahl said.

Russia has repeatedly jammed GPS signals in Ukraine throughout its nearly three-year invasion of the nation, using mobile jammers mounted on trucks. The U.S. Space Force has been developing and testing similar systems of its own.

But on the other hand, the capability to operate drones without the need to transmit and receive GPS signals could make it harder for militaries and other security forces to detect and defend against UAVs.

Several high-profile drone incursions above military facilities or sensitive facilities like nuclear power plants have shown that UAVs are already skirting air defense systems and pose a new threat for which there is no easy solution.

And as the ongoing war in Ukraine shows, the future of air warfare will likely move away from large, expensive fighter jets crewed by human pilots and toward smaller, less expensive drones that are easy to replace.

With that being the case, creating small, inexpensive celestial navigation systems will likely only accelerate the already-burgeoning future of drone warfare.

This research was published last month in the journal "Drones".

NASA scientists conducting surveys of arctic ice sheets in Greenland got an unprecedented view of an abandoned "city under the ice" built by the U.S. military during the Cold War.

During a scientific flight in April 2024, a NASA Gulfstream III aircraft flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet carrying radar instruments to map the depth of the ice sheet and the layers of bedrock below it. The images revealed a new view of Camp Century, a Cold War-era U.S. military base consisting of a series of tunnels carved directly into the ice sheet. 

As it turns out, this abandoned "secret city" was the site of a secret Cold War project known as Project Iceworm which called for the construction of 2,500 miles (4,023 km) of tunnels that could be used to nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the Soviet Union.

"We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn't know what it was at first," said NASA's Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in an agency statement. "In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they've never been seen before."

Construction on Camp Century began in 1959, but the base was abandoned in 1967 due to the costs and challenges of keeping the tunnels from collapsing in the ever-shifting ice sheet.

Project Iceworm sought to use Northern Greenland as a launch site due to its proximity to the Soviet Union and because of the remoteness of the location, according to the 2007 article "The Iceman that Never Came" published in The Scandinavian Journal of History. "The key concept was to deploy the missile force in 'thousands of miles of cut-and-cover tunnels', or rather covered trenches, whose floor would lie 28 feet beneath the surface," the article states. 

The trenches were designed for a type of modified Minuteman IRBM missile known as "Iceman" that would be able to withstand the pressures of launching through the ice sheet. Project Iceworm was ultimately canceled and abandoned along with Camp Century, but the echoes of this era of the Cold War still reverberate throughout the Greenland landscape today. 

Weapons, sewage, fuel and other contaminants were buried at Camp Century when it was abandoned, but the thawing Greenland Ice Sheet threatens to unbury these dangerous relics. The U.S. government even issued a statement in 2017, saying it "acknowledges the reality of climate change and the risk it poses" and will "work with the Danish government and the Greenland authorities to settle questions of mutual security" over Camp Century. 

For now, though, Camp Century helps to serve as a warning and a signpost from which scientists can measure how our changing climate is affecting areas like the Greenland ice sheet. "Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise," said JPL cryospheric scientist Alex Gardner in NASA's statement.

NASA plans to use the data collected by the campaign to inform future studies of Earth's large ice sheets. 

The flights were conducted out of Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Force Base. The Space Force base is now the U.S. military's northernmost installation and supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance missions.

NASA is looking to develop a new generation of low-emission commercial aircraft that will offer a more efficient and sustainable mode of travel.

The space agency has commissioned five new design studies as part of its Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability (AACES) 2050 initiative. The organizations contributing to new airliner design concepts include Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences, the aerospace company Electra, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the aviation startup JetZero and Pratt & Whitney, according to a statement from NASA.

"Through initiatives like AACES, NASA is positioned to harness a broad set of perspectives about how to further increase aircraft efficiency, reduce aviation's environmental impact and enhance U.S. technological competitiveness in the 2040s, 2050s and beyond," Bob Pearce, NASA associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, said in the statement.

Awards issued to support the five NASA-funded studies total $11.5 million. Each organization brings unique expertise to designing a next-generation aircraft concept, ranging from alternative fuel sources to propulsion technologies and aerodynamic vehicle design.

Related: Airplane contrails are a tricky, and surprising, contributor to global warming

"As a leader in U.S. sustainable aviation research and development, these awards are one example of how we bring together the best ideas and most innovative concepts from the private sector, academia, research agencies and other stakeholders to pioneer the future of aviation," Pearce said in the statement.

Aurora Flight Sciences' area of study will examine alternative aviation fuels, propulsion systems, aerodynamic technologies and aircraft configurations. The Electra-led team will explore electric propulsion as well as unique aerodynamic design features for the aircraft's main body and wings that will help reduce both emissions and noise.

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers will focus on sustainability technologies, including alternative fuels, propulsion systems, and aircraft configurations, while JetZero will explore technologies that enable cryogenic liquid hydrogen to be used as a fuel source to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Pratt & Whitney's area of study will include aviation propulsion technologies, focusing on thermal and propulsive efficiency improvements to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

"The proposals selected come from a diverse set of organizations that will provide exciting and wide-ranging explorations of the scenarios, technologies, and aircraft concepts that will advance aviation towards its transformative sustainability goals," Nateri Madavan, director for NASA's Advanced Air Vehicles Program, which AACES falls under, said in the statement.

The aircraft design concepts developed through AACES could enter service within the next 25 years. By making aircraft less dependent on traditional fuel sources that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, NASA is helping to support the U.S. goal of net-zero aviation emissions by 2050. You can find additional details for each of five NASA-funded studies here.

It's never aliens.

At least, it hasn't been yet. The United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities heard testimony on Tuesday (Nov. 19) from Jon T. Kosloski, director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S. Department of Defense created the office in July 2022 in order to have a single place for military and government personnel to report UFO sightings, or UAP, as they're now known. The new term, short for unidentified anomalous phenomena, encompasses not only unidentified objects or events in the sky, but also those in water, in space or those that appear to travel between these domains.

During today's hearing, Kosloski came in strong, stating that "it is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology." Still, despite having resolved hundreds of cases with prosaic explanations, Kosloski noted that his office does not believe that every UAP is a bird, balloon or drone. "We do have some very anomalous objects," he said.

Kosloski also reported on the office's latest analysis of UFO/UAP cases, stressing that his office will "continue to follow the science and data wherever they lead" and keep both Congress and the public as informed as possible  —  at the unclassified level, he clarified.

That stands in stark contrast to testimony presented to a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last week, in which a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and a former U.S. counterintelligence officer told lawmakers that the American government is part of a decades-long coverup to conceal the fact that "we are not alone in the cosmos."

During his testimony, Kosloski gave an overview of his office's activities since it issued a report to Congress and testified in a similar setting last year. "Many reports resolve to commonplace objects like birds, balloons and unmanned systems, while others lack sufficient data for comprehensive analysis," Kosloski said, adding that "only a small percentage of reports received by AARO are potentially anomalous."

Kosloski referred to a UAP incident that occurred in 2013 near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The infrared video, shot in 2013 by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol helicopter, appears to show an object flying just above the ocean before disappearing into it, or perhaps splitting in two.

"We assessed that it was actually flying over the airport the entire time," Kosloski said. When the object appears to disappear in the infrared video that accompanies the case, it is actually the camera sensing that the object is the same temperature as the water behind it. Instead of splitting in two, it was simply two objects  —  balloons or sky lanterns  —  in close proximity that came in and out of view.

Kosloski also offered how his office was able to close the case on the infamous GOFAST video, shot by a U.S. Navy fighter jet in 2016 off the coast of Florida. In that case, the object's apparent speed in the video was actually due to the parallax effect, or the camera's perspective, Kosloski explained.

Furthermore, the AARO director showed a 2018 video captured by a drone flying over Mt. Etna that he stated is not widely known among the public. "This was a rather difficult case to solve," Kosloski said. "The object was actually 170 meters away from the plume — not flying through it."

During questioning, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) asked Kosloski about whether or not some individuals who have encountered UAP might be reluctant to engage with his office, referring to accusations some UAP disclosure advocates frequently level against AARO. These critics attest that the office is part of an alleged decades-long U.S. government-led campaign of "excessive secrecy" that aims to keep the public in the dark about UFOs.

In response to Gillibrand's questioning, Kosloski defended his office. "Congress has gone out of its way to create the organization AARO specifically to conduct these sorts of investigations, and has uniquely empowered them to have access to all UAP related information, whether that's historic or current, and we take that responsibility and those authorities very seriously," he said.

Gillibrand also asked about a report released by AARO in March 2024, noting that she has been told "it doesn't show any any evidence of secret programs that have aliens."

But Gillibrand pushed back on that assertion. "That's not how I read the report," the senator said. "What I read in the report is the US government took sightings extremely seriously over the last 75 years, and put some of the greatest minds together to analyze these cases, because they assessed them as some deeply unknown phenomena that may or may not cause threats — that may or may not be related to adversaries."

AARO released a report to accompany today's hearing earlier this week. The report, titled, "All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena," examines UAP cases dated between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024 as well as historical incidents that were not included in previous reports.

But, like in its other reports, AARO found no smoking gun for alien visitation this year. "AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the report notes. Out of the 485 cases that are well within the report's timeframe, 118 were solved and another 174 were slated to be closed, pending a final review.

Still, AARO's 2024 report says that many cases remain unsolved, and that the office continues to study them. However, AARO’s ability to resolve cases "remains constrained by a lack of timely and actionable sensor data," according to the report, meaning there just isn't enough data to conclusively solve cases that lack detailed or multi-sensor observations. In some cases, all there might be to analyze is a single photograph, a few seconds of grainy video or an aviator's written report. Many UAP sightings happen in the blink of an eye as an unknown object zooms past a moving aircraft, for example, so there often isn't enough time to gather photographic or video evidence.

In other cases, the capabilities of the sensors or platforms involved in the UAP sightings are themselves classified (sometimes, even their existence isn't publicly known), so AARO is unable to discuss them in unclassified reports.

Though overall, according to the 2024 report, there is enough data for AARO to state that it has has "no indication or confirmation that these activities are attributable to foreign adversaries."

Today's hearing echoed a previous hearing held last year on April 19, 2023. During that hearing, AARO's previous director Sean Kirkpatrick told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his office has seen "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."

Similarly, the report released by AARO in March 2024 that examined historical UFO cases found "no evidence that any USG [U.S. government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology."

AARO's previous report, released in 2022, examined 510 contemporary UAP reports gathered from government agencies and branches of the United States military. The report found that, while most cases were able to be resolved, 171 remained a mystery.

"Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," AARO's 2022 report states.

Today's hearing concluded with a discussion of recent incidents in which unidentified drones, or uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), were seen over U.S. military bases and other sensitive installations. Those incidents, Kosloski notes, underscore the need for the United States to have "more persistent monitoring and understand that, whether it is a UAP or a counter-UAS issue, that we need to have that complete domain awareness around our national security facilities."

Boom Supersonic's XB-1 aircraft set a new speed record during its latest test flight. 

The Colorado company is working through a flight test program of the XB-1 supersonic demonstrator aircraft, which completed its most recent test flight on Nov. 5. This was the seventh out of 10 planned subsonic test flights to confirm XB-1's performance and handling qualities before attempting to reach supersonic speeds. 

During the Nov. 5 test flight, which lasted 55 minutes, XB-1 reached an altitude of 23,015 feet (7,015 meters) and a new top speed of 629 mph (1,012 kph). This means the aircraft reached Mach 0.82, marking a major milestone in its progress toward crossing the threshold of Mach 1 and breaking the sound barrier. 

"XB-1, Boom's supersonic demonstrator aircraft, continues to progress toward Mach 1," Boom Supersonic officials said in a statement releasing the results of the Nov. 5 test flight. "Flight seven focused on flutter envelope expansion and cockpit pressure testing in order to ensure safe performance and handling qualities as XB-1 approaches supersonic speeds and higher altitudes."

XB-1 took its maiden flight earlier this year, on March 22. The fastest the aircraft had traveled in prior test flights was Mach 0.69. 

During XB-1's most recent flight, flutter excitement system (FES) tests were performed at Mach 0.7, 0.75, and 0.8. Flutter tests help ensure there are no undesirable interactions between the airflow around the vehicle and the structure of the aircraft at increasing speeds, according to the statement. 

Having also reached its highest altitude yet, the team performed a final cockpit pressurization test at maximum pressure differential, demonstrating the aircraft is ready to proceed up to 30,000 ft (9,144 m) — the altitude at which XB-1 will fly when it reaches supersonic speeds, officials said. 

"XB-1 continues to perform at progressively faster speeds and higher altitudes, expanding the flight envelope gradually to prepare the aircraft and team for breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1," Boom Supersonic officials said in the statement. 

The performance of XB-1 provides the foundation for the design and development of the company's flagship project called Overture — a planned supersonic airliner aimed at making air travel much faster and more efficient. 

NASA's revolutionary X-59 jet is steadily progressing towards its first flight test.

Starting on Oct. 30, engineers with NASA's X-59 Quesst program (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) have been conducting test runs of the jet's engines at the storied Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.

The tests are going in phases. During the preliminary tests, engineers ran the X-59's engines at low speeds without igniting it to check for any leaks and to make sure the aircraft's various systems work together when running on the jet's own power. The X-59 team then fueled the X-59 and tested the engine on low power. So far, engineers with the program say the jet is performing well.

"The first phase of the engine tests was really a warmup to make sure that everything looked good prior to running the engine," said Jay Brandon, chief engineer for the X-59, in a NASA statement.

"Then we moved to the actual first engine start. That took the engine out of the preservation mode that it had been in since installation on the aircraft. It was the first check to see that it was operating properly and that all the systems it impacted — hydraulics, electrical system, environmental control systems, etc. — seemed to be working."

The X-59 is designed to fly at a cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (or 1.4 times faster than the speed of sound) and an altitude of 55,000 feet (16.7 kilometers). The aircraft is powered by a modified F414-GE-100 jet engine made by General Electric; the F414 engine family is used widely throughout military aircraft, including in some variants of the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet flown by the U.S. Navy. 

In fact, NASA has been using F/A-18s to simulate the sound of the X-59 and validate microphones and other acoustic sensors that will help in the jet's testing campaign. 

The X-59 was designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without creating the thunderous sonic boom that typically accompanies breaking the sound barrier. Currently, supersonic flight above land within a certain distance of the U.S. is prohibited by the FAA. NASA hopes the X-59 can validate that supersonic flight is possible without creating deafening sonic booms; if aircraft can be designed to achieve this, domestic flight times could be reduced by half, aiding not only in commercial air travel but also disaster relief and medical transport, for instance.

To help reduce the volume of its sonic booms, the X-59 features a unique geometry including an elongated, beak-like nose section that takes up 38 feet (11.5 meters) of the aircraft's 99.7-foot (30-m) total length.

Rather than a loud, ground-shaking boom, NASA says the jet should make a soft "thump" when it breaks the sound barrier, similar in volume to the sound of a car door slamming outside, as heard from indoors.

Because of the elongated nose, however, pilots flying the X-59 have limited forward vision. In fact, the cockpit does not even feature a forward-facing window or canopy, but instead has a unique "eXternal Vision System," or XVS, consisting of a camera connected to a cockpit-mounted screen that offers pilots the ability to see what's in front of them via augmented reality technology.

"This groundbreaking technology is really a beacon guiding us towards a future where visibility barriers in aircraft design can be overcome with this inventive solution," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy said during the X-59 unveiling ceremony in January 2024.

"This isn't the end of the excitement but a small steppingstone to the beginning," said Paul Dees, deputy propulsion lead for the X-59 program, in NASA's statement.

"It's like the first note of a symphony, where years of teamwork behind the scenes are now being put to the test to prove our efforts have been effective, and the notes will continue to play a harmonious song to flight."

The next phase of testing will involve feeding data into the aircraft's computer systems for both normal and failure conditions to see how the vehicle responds. Following that, the X-59 will undergo taxi testing, where the jet will "drive" out of its hangar onto a runway to test how its control surfaces, brakes and engine perform while on the ground.

A date has not yet been set for the X-59's first flight. When it takes to the skies, the X-59 will fly over selected U.S. cities where researchers will collect data about the quieter "thumps" the Quesst makes as it flies, including how the public on the ground perceives and responds to the noise it makes.

The X-59 has undergone years of development and testing to get this far. NASA has been researching quiet supersonic technologies for decades.

NASA first got funding for the project in 2018 and, later that year, hired Lockheed Martin to build its quiet supersonic jet. The experimental aircraft got its name in 2019. NASA originally thought the X-59 could be completed by 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the aircraft's production.

The jet was finally unveiled to the public in January 2024. In May, the jet passed its Flight Readiness Review, which validated the aircraft's testing plan for safety and offered recommendations to NASA and Lockheed Martin as they prepare for the X-59's first flight.

Six decades after the supersonic Avro Arrow suddenly stopped flying, Canada is working hard to preserve what few pieces of it are left.

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow (known as the Arrow among its fans) was one of the most advanced supersonic jets of its era in the 1950s. It even has a link with NASA across the border, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. But the Arrow program's funding was nixed in 1959 in a still-controversial decision by the Canadian government of the day, led by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.

There was a silver lining for NASA, as a few of Avro's employees eventually were hired by the agency and participated in the early U.S. space program, according to Ingenium. Some even worked on the Apollo moon landings. The Arrow's legacy was recently celebrated at a Canadian museum trying to keep safe the few parts that remain from the program, as the airplanes, plans and most other artifacts were destroyed in the aftermath of the cancellation decision.

Luckily, there's an Arrow nose section on display in Ottawa that represents the largest surviving piece of any of the airplanes; it's in the Cold War section of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum (CASM). Ingenium, which is the organization made up of CASM and two other Ottawa museums, recently took a look at the nose piece to see how it was doing.

Related: In photos: Chuck Yeager: 1st person to break the sound barrier

After museum officials noticed flaking paint, they called in representatives from the government's Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), as the institute works with government heritage collections. At CASM, the institute told the public on Sept. 5 how they feel the artifact is holding up after decades in storage or on display.

To be clear, there are other pieces of the Arrow still preserved, but only a few; most of the airplane pieces were cut up for scrap while "blueprints, models, designs and machines used to make the planes were destroyed," the Canadian Encyclopedia wrote. This situation makes the nose cone all the more precious, as there are scarce remnants of the Arrow's existence still with us six decades on.

CCI representatives did non-invasive examinations with techniques such as X-rays, and took a few tiny samples, to check on the nose cone's health. The analysis uncovered new clues about how the airplane was made. For example, at least one part of the plane's exterior was made of an aluminum alloy, likely including elements such as copper, iron and manganese.

The hatch door of the nose piece had some bare metal and yellow-brown "material" that also underwent scrutiny. The analysis showed the Arrow was treated with zinc chromium before flying, to prevent corrosion when flying through the air. "These materials are known to actually 'brown' as they discolor or degrade," Kathleen Sullivan, CCI conservator of archaeological materials, told the audience during the Sept. 5 event.

Degrading, cream-colored paint on the aircraft as well as a greasy-looking substance on the radar dome also were scrutinized. The radar dome is made from chloroprene rubber, similar to what wetsuits require; that rubber is "becoming almost spongy" with age, CCI conservation scientist Jennifer Poulin said. The grease is also due to age; it's from non-toxic silicone "migrating out from inside the rubber to the surface."

The new analysis will allow conservators to better implement strategies in the coming years to keep the Arrow pieces, which also include ejection seats and flight models, preserved in the coming decades. The Arrow is a popular exhibit at the museum, as its loss remains a sore point in the Canadian aviation community.

Debate continues about whether the government made the right choice given the high cost and quickly changing technology of the era.

"Some think that the Arrow’s high costs contributed to its downfall," the Canadian Encyclopedia stated; the program was estimated at $1.1 billion CDN in 1959, which translates to roughly $11.65 billion CDN today, or $8.57 billion USD at current exchange rates. (For perspective, Canada's 2024 federal budget anticipated $449.2 billion CDN in spending.)

"The Arrow program was very expensive for a country of Canada's size," the encyclopedia added. "But its technology was another concern. The [Canadian] Army's chief of the general staff, Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, was among those who thought that it was already outdated."

Other countries, including the United States, were catching up and surpassing the Arrow's supersonic technology, the encyclopedia noted. Also, satellites were starting to enter orbit as of 1957, throwing into doubt the Arrow's primary role in defense, as it was designed to deal with intercontinental ballistic missiles originating from Earth.

Colorado company Boom Supersonic's XB-1 supersonic demonstrator aircraft flew for the second time ever on Monday (Aug. 26).

The flight took place from California's Mojave Air and Space Port and lasted about 15 minutes, seeing the XB-1 reach an altitude of 10,400 feet (3,170 meters) and a speed of 277 mph (446 kph).

The flight demonstrated landing gear being retracted and extended for the first time, and a new digital stability augmentation system was tested to improve handling.

The test marks another step toward achieving supersonic flight, expected later in the year, according to a company statement.

"XB-1 had a fantastic second flight this morning. Initial results indicate we've successfully resolved the findings from Flight One and are excited to continue flight testing on the path to supersonic flight," said Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic. "I'm proud of the team. Today's flight is another step toward the return of supersonic passenger travel."

Related: The speed of sound on Mars is different from Earth, Perseverance rover finds

The XB-1 test plane had its first flight in March this year. The company now intends to ramp up its flight rate and plans around 10 tests before reaching for supersonic speeds.

The XB-1 program is part of the design and development process for Boom's flagship project, Overture, a planned supersonic airliner. Boom Supersonic aims to revolutionize air travel by making it much faster and more efficient.

Poland's leading aerospace entity: Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation inaugurated its new Rocket and Satellite Propulsion Laboratory Center. The new facilities are to aid further development of green space propulsion technologies in Europe. The center was opened on October 24, 2023 with a strong representation from the European Space Agency, key European Large Satellite Integrators and primes in Space Transportation Systems – among others: ArianeGroup, OHB, Nammo, The Exploration Company, as well as new space players.

Development of green propulsion

Being one of the leaders in green propulsion, with over 30 European projects in Space Propulsion funded by the European Space Agency and European Commission in the past decade, Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation aims to be the region's Green Propulsion R&D Hub and continue to be one of Europe's hot spots regarding innovative propulsion technologies. One of the Institute's goals is to facilitate new technology industrialization and provide services for external clients. Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation is a member of the Polish ESA Business Incubation Centre consortium and delivers R&D services to start-ups and global sector leaders.

"These services are not limited to rocket thruster and engine vacuum hot firings. Apart from four space propulsion test cells on campus, we offer extensive laboratories for advanced manufacturing (including ECSS-compliant metal additive manufacturing in stainless steel, copper and other alloys), composite technologies, environmental testing and materials and structures testing facilities. Our goal is to become a one-stop-shop for the global aerospace industry," says Director of Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation, Ph.D. Eng. Paweł Stężycki.

Testing of green propulsion

With a total of a few thousand square meters of space technology laboratories with specialized infrastructure, the Institute offers:

• Vacuum hot fire green thrusters' and engines' testing and qualification (up to 500N of thrust).
• Atmospheric test stands for space propulsion (for systems with thrusts of up to 5,000N).
• Extensive chemical laboratories for novel propellant and energetic materials research along with tests aiding storability and compatibility of propellants.
• Space subsystems testing laboratories, including valve testing, control systems and avionics laboratories with ISO 8 cleanroom.
• Environmental test stands – Thermal Vacuum Chamber, vibration and high-pressure tests.

Via the new facility and joining Europe's top high-altitude space propulsion test centers, Poland has taken a significant step towards advancing its presence in space exploration. This state-of-the-art facility, founded with the cooperation of the local government and Łukasiewicz – Research Network represents a milestone in the country's pursuit of space research and innovation.

New unique capabilities position the Institute as a key European player in the development of novel chemical propulsion technology for upcoming missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

High test peroxide solutions

The last five years have been a streak of successes for Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation. Some of them include successful in-flight demonstrations: of the world's first vehicle using 98% hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer (the ILR-33 AMBER suborbital rocket) and the world's first flight of a rocket powered by a Rotating Detonation Engine using liquid propellants. Most recent advances include the development of new catalyst bed technology for hydrogen peroxide (giving the gold medal to Ph.D. Eng. Paweł Surmacz during the recent INNOVERSE EXPO 2023 in Atlanta) and novel storable fuel for hypergolic use with hydrogen peroxide (with potential cooperation with The Exploration Company, after the MoU signed during the opening ceremony).

The institute's Space Propulsion and Space Transportation engineering team surpassed 100 FTE in 2023 and the recent fewfold increase of Polish budget in ESA optional programs gives bright prospects for further growth of international cooperation.

Our space technologies offer

Contact us: info@ilot.lukasiewicz.gov.pl

The construction of the Rocket and Satellite Propulsion Laboratory Center received co-funding of over 5.7 million Euro from the 2014-2020 European Union Regional Operational Programme of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship. The total investment exceeds 12 million Euro.

Small-rocket startup bluShift Aerospace will test its revamped MAREVL engine today (May 3), and you can watch the action live.

The test, at bluShift's facility in Brunswick, Maine, is scheduled to begin today at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of bluShift, or directly via the Maine-based company.

"You won't want to miss this! We have completely overhauled this engine since our last test and we're ready to see how it performs. This new version of the engine is longer, larger and capable of delivering up to 50% more thrust," bluShift wrote in a description of the test.

Video: Meet the bluShift Aerospace team for smallsat rocket launches

bluShift aims to give small satellites dedicated rides to orbit using rockets that burn non-toxic, bio-derived fuels.

The company has launched high-altitude test flights but has yet to mount a space mission. But that could change soon: bluShift aims to attempt a space launch in the next year or so, provided today's engine test and other developmental work goes well.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Dawn Aerospace's robotic space plane flew with a rocket engine for the first time last month, taking a major step toward the company's goal of building a fully and rapidly reusable craft. 

Last week, the 15.7-foot-long (4.8 meters) Mk-II Aurora flew three times, and "all test objectives were achieved," Dawn representatives said in a statement issued on Wednesday (April 5). The company also released a one-minute video showing the sleek space plane flying over New Zealand's stunning South Island, close to the Glentanner Aerodrome where the tests were carried out.

In August 2021, the Mk-II Aurora debuted with five test flights using surrogate jet engines, but the plan was always to pivot to a rocket-powered engine. In the latest series of tests, which took place once each day from Wednesday (March 29) to Friday (March 31), the Mk-II Aurora flew to a height of 6,000 feet (1,830 m) at speeds of 196 mph (315 kph), which is similar to those the space plane had achieved during its 2021 test flights, Dawn team said in Wednesday's update.

Related: Space planes: evolution of the winged spaceship (infographic)

"This is a phenomenal achievement for our small, but extremely capable, team in New Zealand and the Netherlands," Stefan Powell, the CEO of Dawn Aerospace, said Wednesday in a different statement. "To my knowledge, Dawn now operates the most rapidly reusable rocket-powered aircraft in the world."

The latest test flights aimed mainly to validate the plane's rocket engine. So the height reached by the plane was not a key factor, and future flights are expected to increase both speed and altitude. 

The Dawn team envisions its Mk-II Aurora, which can carry a small payload of 2.2 pounds (5 kilograms), not only to be able to fly more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) high, but to do so twice per day when it carries out commercial operations, such as sending satellites into space. When that manifests, Mk-II Aurora will become the first fully reusable satellite launcher.

Back in December 2020, Dawn Aerospace was approved to fly the Mk-II Aurora out of a conventional airport alongside civil airplanes. This approval, granted by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority, the agency responsible for the country's aviation safety and security, was another major win for the company. 

Airports usually wait until launched rockets exit Earth's atmosphere and sometimes even reroute commercial flights because rockets can leave debris in their wake that can impact passenger planes. Dawn's team says the Mk-II Aurora stands out in this regard because it is designed to take off and land on a runway, just like an airplane. The space plane thus would not need any special restrictions or dedicated runways.

All of these milestones, including the success of the latest test flights, advance Dawn's goal to produce reusable space planes in a scalable and sustainable way, as the company looks toward achieving 100 to 1,000 flights per plane.

"Sustainability is important to us," Powell said in his statement on Wednesday. "Beyond being the responsible thing to do, there is no point in building something if we aren't going to be able to use it."

As of late 2022, Dawn had raised $13 million to build a successor to Mk-II Aurora that would be able to carry a 550-pound (250 kg) payload to orbit.

Follow Sharmila Kuthunur on Twitter @Sharmilakg. Follow us @Spacedotcom, or on Facebook and Instagram.

Hypersonic technology is all the rage right now, though the specific concepts and applications are hardly anything new. However, that's not stopping the mad rush of aerospace firms from attempting to inject hypersonic capabilities into everything from missiles to airplanes to space planes and beyond.

Even Hollywood recently dipped its toes into the super-speed game by enlisting Lockheed Martin's legendary Skunk Works to help develop their fictional hypersonic jet for the "Top Gun: Maverick" blockbuster.

Ambitious startup Venus Aerospace recently joined the growing crowd of firms attempting to achieve hypersonic flight when they unveiled their revolutionary "Stargazer" concept vehicle at the UP.Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Formed in 2017, the UP.Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only gathering that lures a wide range of corporate CEOs, innovative startup founders, visionary investors, and deep-pocket capital allocators with over $1 trillion in potential funding assets on tap. 

Related: Stratolaunch reveals its first hypersonic design for high-altitude flights

The "Stargazer," is the Houston, Texas-based company’s first conceptual hypersonic vehicle out of the gate and its futuristic needle-nosed shape is certainly a radical departure from most passenger aircraft.

"Stargazer" was imagined as a next-generation Mach 9 hypersonic drone as well as a Mach 9 crewed aircraft, and both variants are hypothetically capable of taking a quick dash across the Earth from Tokyo to Los Angeles in about one hour. Hypersonic planes of this nature would take off from a conventional airport at subsonic speeds before streaking into the wild blue yonder to just the edge of outer space (170,000 feet, or 51,816 meters) while in hypersonic mode.

The aircraft's proposed dimensions are 100 feet (30.5 m) wide by 150 feet (46 m) long when an actual physical mockup is constructed. The "Stargazer" will tip the scales at 150,000 pounds (68,039 kilograms) and have room to seat a maximum of 12 passengers.

Venus Aerospace was founded just two years ago by Sarah "Sassie" Duggleby and Dr. Andrew Duggleby. Their main goal for this sleek craft that could hypothetically reach velocities of nearly 7,000 mph (11,000 kph) is to whisk ticket-holders to their destinations in record-breaking time while being also seriously eco-friendly.

This new aerospace player has already obtained $33 million in private investor funding, which includes major venture capitalist investments, and an additional $1 million in government cash. Venus has also bolstered their balance sheet by recently announcing $20 million more raised in a Series A offering led by Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital firm that invests in breakthrough scientific startups. 

Details as to the type of environmentally-conscious fuel the "Stargazer" will guzzle has not been revealed yet as the hypersonic craft is still in the early stages of conception, nor have certain questions over noise pollution been answered.

"We worked with NASA at the Johnson Space Center and were able to access the information from the sonic boom testing from the space shuttle program," Duggleby said in a Flying interview. "We determined that at altitude and speed flying you will not be able to hear us — we will be flying at 170,000 feet at Mach 9."

With an optimistic game plan underway, Venus has already developed and built a technology demonstration engine and has conducted pivotal tests inside hypersonic wind tunnels and propulsion labs around the country. The company hopes to start subsonic and supersonic drone testing next year.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Ukraine could be a space technology superpower but the country is held back by "Stalin-esque" attitudes that treat experts like peasants, says American aerospace engineering student Aaron Harford, who chose Ukrainian capital Kyiv for his Ph.D. studies four years ago. 

A mid-life divorce prompted Harford, at that time a math professor at Henderson State University in Arkansas, to uproot his life and fulfill his two life-long dreams: to spend time in Ukraine, the homeland of his ancestors, and to pursue a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. The experience turned out to be even more life-changing than he had expected. Not only did he witness the build-up to the most serious armed conflict in Europe since World War II, but has also gained unique insights into the ailments of a place that has all the prerequisites to be a technology superpower, but is held back by more than 30-year-old ghosts of an overthrown political regime.

It might sound surprising that a third generation American from California who spent a short time working with start-ups in the Mojave Desert, one of the world's most exciting new space hubs, would want to study aerospace engineering in Ukraine. To Harford, however, the idea makes a lot of sense. The Eastern European country, wedged between Russia (its one-time superior from the times when both were part of the Soviet Union) and the European Union, may have a gross domestic product per capita of about one 17th of that of the United States. It, however, boasts a population exquisitely educated in sought-after STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering &Mathematics) disciplines and a history full of big names from the early days of aviation and space engineering.

Live updates: Russia's Ukraine invasion and space impacts
Related: Ukraine's proud space industry faces obliteration, but former space chief hopes for the future

STEM powerhouse

For example, the school where Harford enrolled in 2018 is the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI), named after its famous alumni, a legendary helicopter designer who in 1919 immigrated to the U.S. where he founded the Sikorsky Aircraft company, which is today owned by Lockheed Martin. 

Sergei Korolev, the architect of the Soviet Union's early space successes (including the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 and the first human in space Yuri Gagarin), also studied at KPI. Yuri Kondratyuk, the physicist that first developed the theoretical concept of a lunar landing, was also a Ukrainian.

This legacy of science and exploration, Harford told Space.com, is not only still alive in Ukraine, but thriving. Ukraine owns one of the largest rocket factories in Europe — Yuzmash — which manufactures, among others, first stages for Northrup Grumann's Antares rockets that launch the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station. Over 16,000 people work for corporations managed by Ukraine's national space agency.

"Their engineers, scientists and technicians are world class," Harford said. "That's a fact. Technologies like Hall Effect Thrusters [a type of spacecraft propulsion that uses a stream of accelerated ions to generate motion] were developed and are still perfected here. You can just walk into a lab and see them running tests on them."

Ukraine, Harford said, is a great springwell of engineering talent. According to a report by software development outsourcing company N-iX, 130,000 young people graduate every year in Ukraine (a country with a population of 44 million) in engineering disciplines. That is about as much as in Europe's traditional (and nearly twice as populous) technology powerhouse Germany (based on data from the website Studying in Germany). 

A "Stalin-esque" legacy 

This technological utopia, however, is struggling to shake off what Harford describes as a "Stalin-esque legacy." Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, a federation of Eastern European republics led by Russia, for nearly 70 years. Socialist central planning as opposed to commercial competition ruled the economy of that era together with oppression of political dissenters. Ukraine's aerospace research establishments were built in those times. Even 30 years after Ukraine's separation, the remnants are still very much present.

"The higher education system in Ukraine is perhaps the most Stalin-esque of all the institutions here," said Harford, referring to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, the despot who led the Soviet Union in its glory years from 1922 to 1953. "They do not value their people appropriately. The staff here, the Ph.D.s, they are all very highly educated, highly intelligent and highly skilled professionals, but they are making three, four, five hundred dollars per month. You can't live on that in Kyiv. It's like a continuation of being a Soviet peasant."

KPI's campus, Harford admits, in spite of the cutting-edge research, is not a vibrant international hub where students from all over the world would mingle, like they do at prestigious universities in the west. In fact, Harford himself is the only and perhaps the first ever American Ph.D. at his department, he added. 

"In my class, I have just seen Ukrainians," Harford said. "I've seen some Chinese and Indian students around but not many."

The Ukrainians' attitude to the odd American ranges from cautious suspicion to sometimes excessive excitement, he shared. 

"Sometimes they may have somewhat unrealistic expectations," he said. "They would like to have their American dream and have SpaceX here. But I think that having foreigners here and interacting with them, getting out to conferences in the West and sending their people to fellowships to the US and Europe, that's part of overcoming some of that Soviet legacy."

At a crossroads

Harford arrived in Ukraine in 2018, four years after Russia's forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, a formerly Ukrainian territory on the Black Sea coast. It was also four years after the Euromaidan protests, which ousted the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich who was later accused of treason. 

It was actually Yanukovich and his allies (connected to Russian oligarchs) that stalled the signing of the European Union's Ukraine Association Agreement, which aimed to strengthen the connection between Ukraine and western Europe. Instead, they worked to reinforce Russia's influence in Ukraine. The Euromaidan revolution swiveled Ukraine back toward the west. 

Since than, Harford said, Russia has behaved like a "jealous ex-husband who rather murders the wife than lets her go". 

"I didn't think about it that much while I was in the U.S., but after I got here, and over the course of several years, I discovered that this is really a very simple conflict," Harford said. "For Ukraine, it makes things really complicated. It's difficult to rise above the Soviet legacy, it's almost impossible when they are actively waging war on you."

Although the Crimean Crisis formally ended in March 2014, the war in Eastern Ukraine never stopped. From 2014 to the beginning of Putin's full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 14,000 people died in struggles with Russia-sponsored separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to Crisis Group International. The conflict led to the tragic crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down by the pro-Russian rebels over Eastern Ukraine in July 2014 while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. 

Making history

Despite Russia's intensifying aggression, Harford remains in Ukraine. Shortly before the beginning of the invasion (which as he says was by no means unexpected for the Ukrainians), he relocated with his family to the Zakarpattia region near Ukraine's western borders.

"I thought I knew what patriotism was, and what freedom was, until I came here and saw how the Ukrainians act," he said. "It's not for glory, nor for payment. A lot of my colleagues were born and lived under the Soviet Union, and they understand what's at stake. It's very inspiring to see."

It's this Ukrainian resolve and courage that makes Harford believe not only in the future of Ukraine, but also in his future in the country.

After finishing his Ph.D., he sees himself launching a start-up developing active radiation shielding for spacecraft aiming for Mars and deep space, helping to rebuild the new, more modern Ukraine. 

"Never in history have we had a chance like this," he said. "To leave, I think I would regret it for the rest of my life."

But the war is not over yet. Every day, reports keep coming from Ukraine about Russian missiles ravaging Ukrainian cities. The threat of a nuclear accident at one of the occupied power plants, or, even worse, the possible use of banned chemical weapons or even tactical nuclear missiles, hangs over Ukraine. The path to freedom is nowhere near secured.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPutlarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

There's a new private space plane in the works.

Washington-based Radian Aerospace emerged from "stealth mode" Wednesday (Jan. 19), announcing that it has raised $27.5 million in seed funding. The money will aid the development of Radian One, a crew-carrying orbital space plane that Radian hopes will transform spaceflight as well as travel here on Earth.

"We believe that widespread access to space means limitless opportunities for humankind," Radian CEO and co-founder Richard Humphrey said in a statement. 

"Over time, we intend to make space travel nearly as simple and convenient as airliner travel," Humphrey said. "We are not focused on tourism; we are dedicated to missions that make life better on our own planet, like research, in-space manufacturing and terrestrial observation, as well as critical new missions like rapid global delivery right here on Earth."

Space planes: Evolution of the winged spaceship (infographic)

Radian One is an ambitious vehicle. It's designed to launch and land horizontally on a runway, unlike NASA's old space shuttle orbiters, which landed horizontally but lifted off vertically with the help of solid rocket boosters. (Radian One will get some takeoff help, too, from a sled that will accelerate the vehicle on the runway.)

The new space plane will be fully reusable and capable of spending up to five days in orbit, according to its newly unveiled specifications page. Rapid turnaround time is also part of the plan: Radian aims eventually to refly vehicles as soon as 48 hours after touchdown.

Radian One is designed to carry people and payloads to and from orbit. But the space plane could also do a lot of work here on Earth; the plane will be able to deliver up to 5,000 pounds (2,270 kilograms) anywhere on the planet in less than an hour, Radian Aerospace representatives said.

Radian has not revealed many other details about the space plane — for example, its size, how many passengers it will be able to carry and when it's expected to start flying. Radian representatives said in Wednesday's press release that it has signed launch services agreements with a variety of private companies and government agencies, but it did not name any of those customers.

The new round of seed funding was led by the venture capital fund Fine Structure Ventures. A number of other investors chipped in, including Exor, The Venture Collective, Helios Capital, SpaceFund, Gaingels, The Private Shares Fund, Explorer 1 Fund and Type One Ventures, Radian representatives said.

"On-demand space operations is a growing economy, and I believe Radian's technology can deliver on the right-sized, high-cadence operations that the market opportunity is showing," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space and an early personal investor in Radian, said in the same statement. 

"I am confident in the team working at Radian and look forward to cheering them along in this historical endeavor," added Taylor, who recently flew to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook. 

Metal 3D printing can produce the most intricate rocket parts, using combustion-resistant material. While 3D printing isn't new, how has the technology advanced to face the more extreme conditions of space?

From plastic to metal

Since the first 3D printers appeared in the 1980s, its applications have continued to grow. Initially, the technology was relatively unknown, according to Live Science, but gained popularity in the 21st century. In the early years of 3D printing, it was used mainly for speedy prototyping and the filament available was limited to plastics. This flexible material is the simplest option for 3D printing as it can be easily melted and shaped. 

At room temperature, metal doesn’t naturally lend itself to being printed as a fluid. However, this is exactly what today’s machines allow. To make small shapes in metal, 3D printing is a far quicker method compared to metal cutting. The latter is a subtractive process, the book Introduction to Plastics Engineering (2018) explains, which involves carving into roughly shaped chunks of metal, and it can be extremely costly and time consuming. Instead, 3D printing is an additive process that uses carefully selected dimensions to build up a 3D piece layer by layer. 

Some metal printing methods have more steps than others, based on the method of printing. Selective metal sintering prints metal by combining it with plastic. This makes the printing process similar to that of printing with plastic. The difference is that when it is removed from the machine, it isn’t a fully metal piece yet. Further steps strengthen the printed part and remove the unwanted plastic. 

Related: Relativity Space unveils fully reusable, 3D-printed Terran R rocket 

Space application

Metal printing is favoured by many engineers tasked with making space-based components such as metal parts for rockets. Because rocket engines need to be able to withstand very high temperatures, an Inconel copper superalloy powder is often chosen. Inconel is a distinctive class of superalloys that are recognised for their corrosion and oxidation resistance. 

Instead of incorporating plastic into the metal filament, printing for space-based applications is better suited to Direct Metal Laser Sintering. To produce dense rocket parts, loose metal powder is laid in layers. Between each layer being placed, a laser is pointed onto the metal powder. The laser traces the precise shape dictated by the digital file, melting and binding the metal in the process. This is repeated for each layer, until the solid metal shape is submerged in the excess metal powder. 

Soon, metal 3D printing could take place in space to create tools, instead of sending equipment by rocket. This would lower the time taken to receive replacement parts for repairs as well as the cost of flying them from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA is currently funding research into metal 3D printing in low gravity. Depending on the success of space-based manufacturing, the future could include printing a base on the moon.  

Melting metal

From digital file to metal part, follow the steps of the metal printing process in the following interactive image.

Additional resources

What's next for metal 3D printing in space? You can read about the progression towards autonomous 3D printing in space in this article by NASA. Or, learn more about how 3D printing can assist Space Station Research.

It's World Space Week this week, which means now is the perfect time to look for cool space toys, especially ones that come with a big discount. 

Amazon is offering a fantastic 27% off a 12-in-1 Aerospace Building Kit that comes with 566 pieces and is perfect for any young space fan or any child wanting to be entertained. The set is 12-in-1 because 12 different models can be built from the pieces provided and eventually combined to make one larger (8-inch or 20 centimeters) space shuttle. 

The original asking price for the Aerospace Building Kit was $27.99 but has been knocked down to just $20.39. You'll have to act quickly if you want to grab this deal as we're not sure how long it will last.

Related: Lego space deals
More: Lego Star Wars deals 

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) kits are a great way to keep children entertained whilst educating them. The 12-in-1 Aerospace Building Kit fits perfectly into that as it gets kids building and learning (and let's face it, what kid hasn't wanted to be an astronaut at some point?).

The smaller iterations of this 12-in-1 kit include a range of aircraft, rockets and rovers, among others.

According to Amazon, this set is suitable for anyone between the ages of 6 and 12, with the building blocks made of a non-toxic, high-quality and washable plastic. On top of this, colorful stickers are included to make the objects more vivid to children. 

Follow Alexander Cox on Twitter @Coxy_97Official. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Dawn Aerospace's suborbital space plane flew for the first time last month, and a new video takes you along for the ride.

The 15.7-foot-long (4.8 meters) Mk-II Aurora, a robotic vehicle that Dawn is developing to carry small payloads to and from suborbital space, conducted five test flights over New Zealand's South Island between July 28 and July 30.

The Mk-II Aurora stayed firmly within Earth's atmosphere each time, reaching a maximum altitude of 3,400 feet (1,036 meters), Dawn representatives said. That was always the plan for these initial sorties; the space plane flew with surrogate jet engines, not the rocket engine it will eventually sport.

Related: Space planes: evolution of the winged spaceship (infographic)

"Dawn is focused on sustainable and scalable access to space, and our Mk-II vehicle is entirely reusable," Stefan Powell, the CEO of the New Zealand-Dutch space company, said in a statement Thursday (Aug. 26). 

Powell said he's extremely proud of the Dawn engineering team for designing a vehicle that "flies beautifully" the first time just as expected. 

"We are delighted with the results and demonstrating rapid turnaround — we conducted five flights within three days, and two flights occurred within 90 minutes of each other," he added. 

The newly released 59-second video captures some highlights from last month's flights, which lifted off from the South Island's Glentanner Aerodrome. The footage shows the Mk-II zooming above some of the gorgeous snowy mountains and crystalline lakes that New Zealand is known for. 

The vehicle takes off from, and lands on, a runway like an airplane. And its operations will be quite airplane-like, if all goes according to plan: Late last year, the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority granted Dawn permission to fly the Mk-II Aurora from a conventional airport, with no exclusive airspace restrictions needed.

"We were successful in demonstrating our ability to integrate with other airspace operators," Powell said of last month's flights. "Fixed-wing aircraft and local helicopter companies continued their operations unaffected."

Testing of the Mk-II and its various systems continues apace. For example, the vehicle's rocket engine is in the late stages of testing, Dawn representatives said. When the engine is ready to go, it will be fitted to the space plane, allowing the company to begin supersonic and high-altitude trials of the space plane.

Eventually, Dawn plans to fly Mk-II space missions multiple times a day. The company's vision doesn't end with getting the suborbital space plane fully up and running, however; Dawn is also developing a 59-foot-long (18 m) space plane called the Mk-III, which will be capable of carrying up to 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of payload to Earth orbit, Dawn representatives said.

Dawn has other aspects to its business as well. For example, the company also builds propulsion systems for small satellites.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

The idea of an antigravity suit may seem like the stuff of sci-fi, but one such garment that was worn by a NASA astronaut is among the space artifacts now highlighting how aerospace medicine can be "stranger than fiction."

Opening on Saturday (July 3) at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, "Stranger Than Fiction: The Incredible Science of Aerospace Medicine" brings together dozens of aviation and space artifacts to tell the story of how doctors and researchers have devised the means to keep humans alive and in good health while in the extreme environments of air and space flight.

"They have got my Kentavr, which is a Russian device to prevent fainting after landing," NASA astronaut Michael Barratt said in an interview with collectSPACE.com, describing his "antigravity suit" — a pair of blue compression shorts that he wore to return from the International Space Station in 2009. "It squeezes the legs and thighs."

Related: The Human Body in Space: 6 Weird Facts

A member of the team who helped create the exhibition for The Museum of Flight, Barratt's familiarity with space medicine precedes his own two missions into orbit. A former NASA flight surgeon and medical operations lead for the space station, Barratt lectures extensively about space and extreme medicine and serves as the senior editor for a textbook on the subject.

Even so, Barratt recognizes how the topic can be seen as "stranger than fiction."

"Well, for me, it's reality, and it's strange. I would call it a very strange reality," he said.

"I teach space medicine to a lot of various audiences, mostly medical. So when I do this, I'm talking about adaptive physiology, G- [gravity-] loads and microgravity to various medical audiences and they have to be six layers deep in detail. And even to them, it is very novel. What we see is way outside their experience base," Barratt said. "Now [with this exhibit] we are trying to communicate these concepts with the general public. So to them, it will be sort of science fiction."

Recognizing what the challenge might be from the start, the museum adopted a motif for the exhibit that matches the expectations for subject matter — vintage comic book art.

"Early on, there was a lot of concern about the exhibit being too technical, too dry and that it would be challenging to make it appealing to the general public," Geoff Nunn, the museum's adjunct curator for space history, told collectSPACE. "One of the goals of the exhibit is to present flight surgeons as heroes and we realized that the stories of them exploring the unknown, acting as their own test subjects and coming up with these incredible devices and technological contraptions to make flying safe really read like a classic comic or an action serial."

"So we put this visual style with these stories because it brought these incredible feats forward and helped make them more accessible to a general audience," he said.

"Stranger Than Fiction" spans the history of aviation to modern day spaceflight. In addition to Barratt's Kentavr, the exhibition's space artifacts include the medical kit flown on the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour; a Russian "Penguin Suit" sized for NASA astronaut Wendy Lawrence to keep her fit in orbit; and the BioSuit, a skintight spacesuit designed by NASA's former deputy administrator and MIT professor of astronautics, Dava Newman.

"They also have my Russian biomedical harness that I wore during a Russian spacesuit EVA [extravehicular activity, or spacewalk] and a couple of heritage radiation detectors that we had in our inventory here at NASA from the Apollo era," Barratt said.

The exhibition, which runs through Feb. 6, 2022, is opening at a time when the number of people who have the opportunity to experience spaceflight is expected to expand dramatically with the rise of commercial spaceflight and the space tourism market. The advancements in aerospace medicine from the past will help keep those passengers safe, while the growth in the number and types of people who fly is anticipated to reveal new challenges, both Nunn and Barratt said.

"As we start looking to fly more spaceflight participants through private companies the community is having to adjust how they look at space flyer safety," said Nunn.

"Not only is the commercial community growing, but the space medical community that is needed really to support and understand this effort is growing as well, and it is one of the most satisfying things to see," Barratt said.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2021 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

HOUSTON — More than 50 years after it provided the communications link between Houston and the moon, Collins Aerospace is again helping connect "Space City" with the future of U.S. activities in space.

The aerospace company, a unit of Raytheon Technologies, has become an anchor tenant at Houston Spaceport, the "world's first truly urban commercial spaceport." Collins Aerospace executives joined city and spaceport officials on Monday (June 7) to ceremonially break ground on its new 8-acre (3.2 hectares), approximately 120,000-square-foot (11,150 square meters) campus located at Ellington Airport.

"Today we are once again standing before you and the rest of the world to fortify our position as the Space City," said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, addressing an invited audience at the Lone Star Flight Museum, where the groundbreaking was held. "I am pleased to announce that Collins Aerospace has joined the Houston Spaceport family."

"You may remember the famous broadcast from the moon when Neil Armstrong said, 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' That message was received by mission control, right here in the City of Houston — and [now] there is yet another tie to that day. Neil Armstrong used a Collins radio to broadcast that message, [from] the same organization that is now planting its roots in our soil," said Turner.

Related: Photos from NASA's Apollo moon missions

Suited for growth

The new Collins Aerospace campus at Houston Spaceport will replace the company's current offices near NASA's Johnson Space Center, which has reached capacity. The facility will continue to be part of the company's Mission Systems business, providing life support systems for NASA's spacesuits now in use aboard the International Space Station and for the agency's Orion crew spacecraft on future Artemis missions to the moon.

The new location will also host Houston's first incubator supporting spaceflight, with a 10,000-square-foot (930 square meters) area set aside for startups and universities to collaborate on solving space technology challenges, including robotics, medicine and additive manufacturing. 

"[The new] facility will enable Collins to continue to support the evolution of our tried and true products, including the support for future spacesuit development," said Allen Flynt, vice president and general manager for civil space and sea systems at Collins Aerospace. "Being part of the Houston Spaceport will provide a great environment, not only for Collins, but other members of the space community. We can come together and help facilitate collaboration."

As an anchor tenant of the spaceport, Collins will receive up to $25.6 million in financing from Houston Airports for capital improvements. The amount will be reimbursed by the company.

"We're very excited about our new home at the Houston Spaceport. We hope to occupy that no less than a year from now," said Flynt.

Leading the way

"I am confident that the cluster of aerospace companies being brought together here at Houston Spaceport will not only revitalize our city's name, but it will also energize our workforce," said Mayor Turner. "I am proud to say that Houston is leading the way and is doing more than any other spaceport in the nation to attract the best of the best."

Collins is the second anchor tenant and third company to relocate to Houston Spaceport. Intuitive Machines, which is under contract with NASA to land payloads on the moon beginning in 2022, was first, followed by Axiom Space, which in December announced plans to build its 14-acre (5.7 hectares) headquarters at the spaceport. Axiom's campus will be used to train astronauts and build the world's first free-flying commercial space station.

Licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 as the nation's 10th commercial spaceport (three more have been added since), Houston Spaceport's urban location prevents it from hosting vertical launches, but it may someday support horizontal takeoff and landing space vehicles. For now, the focus is on growing Houston's role in the space industry community.

"No longer are we satisfied to be called 'Space City' because we track all U.S. [crewed] flights from Houston," said Mario Diaz, director of Houston Airports. "With Collins' commitment, we are prepared to build the vehicles, to power them, control them and navigate them, from takeoff to landing, across the backdrop and breadth of space."

Robert Pearlman is a Space.com contributing writer and the editor of collectSPACE.com, a Space.com partner site and the leading space history news publication. Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook.

A New Zealand-based company has received approval to fly a suborbital space plane from a conventional airport.

Dawn Aerospace got the nod from the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to fly the company's Mk-II Aurora space plane, which is designed to send satellites into space on multiple flights a day, at a conventional airport whose name and location has not been disclosed yet.

Usually such vehicles need to be launched at isolated facilities, because otherwise regulators need to shut down the local commercial air space to allow the space planes to fly out of the atmosphere. 

Related: Space planes: evolution of the winged spaceship (infographic)

"The challenge of getting to space is equal parts the vehicle, the launch infrastructure and the regulation," Dawn chief technical officer Stefan Powell said in a statement. 

"We have made great strides in revolutionizing the hardware. Today is a significant step towards the rest; showing we can fly from one of the thousands of civilian airports around the world, and do so without kicking other aircraft out of their airspace. This is the key to rapid, reusable and sustainable spaceflight."

Putting Dawn Aerospace's vehicle at an airport may, in the long run, reduce costs and other complications, the company added in the statement. The company and CAA spent 18 months designing flight procedures and systems to let Dawn's planes fly safely along with commercial flights at the airport.

"The New Zealand Space Agency has also played a key role in ensuring that this certification will work in combination with a high-altitude vehicle license, thus providing access in time to suborbital space," Dawn stated.

The first test flights of Mk-II Aurora will happen in 2021 in a more isolated airspace, at an undisclosed "remote airport" in the south island of New Zealand, Dawn said.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

In life, journalist Jacques Tiziou amassed an extensive space exploration archive. Now, his son is seeking help in finding a home for the myriad of documents, memorabilia and "space junk" that his late father left behind.

Jacques-Jean "JJ" Tiziou inherited his father's collection after Tiziou died at the age of 77 in 2017. A celebrated reporter whose work began with the beginning of the space age and who covered the Apollo moon landings for the only two French TV channels at the time, Tiziou was recognized by NASA on its media center's wall of honor after his retirement in 2011.

"I didn't really get this when I was growing up, but his was the voice known throughout French-speaking countries for telling everyone about mankind's race to the moon," said JJ in a video accompanying his "Excavating the Tiziou Space History 'Museum'" crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter website. "As it turned out, my space geek dad was a big enough deal that the Kennedy Space Center gave him a plaque on the wall recognizing him as a 'Chronicler,' whose career has provided knowledge, ideas and inspiration worldwide."

Related: Moon Memories: Thousands of Apollo Photos Released Online

Many of those who met Tiziou walked away with a souvenir of the encounter — a "bit" of space history. Tiziou collected, cut apart and individually bagged small pieces of spacecraft and space-flown materials, which he frequently gave away as his "space bits."

But those bits were only the tip of Tiziou's space collection.

"He built up what he called his 'museum,' which was a giant collection of archives, press clippings, documents, collector's items, signed prints, tchotchkes — you name it, he had it," described JJ. "But all the cool space stuff was buried as his need to hold onto things slowly overtook his capacity to manage the collection."

"Over time, his hoarding tendencies overtook his space. I have been working for over a year to get all the extraneous stuff out of the way and now it is ready for the space collection to take flight," explained JJ.

NASA and the National Air and Space Museum were given first crack at the files and came away with 140 boxes of research materials for the space agency's and Smithsonian's archives. But that was just a small fraction of Tiziou's holdings.

"The next step is finding a home for the rest of it, as well as for all the collector's memorabilia and ephemera," said JJ.

The Kickstarter campaign aims to underwrite that effort while also cleaning many of the odds and ends that Tiziou was fond of giving out.

"I'd love for all these rocket fragments and spaceship bits and signed prints and patches and pins to go to space geeks who would love them, and it is what he wanted," said JJ. "By becoming a backer of this project, you will help me create a memorial to Jacques and save his collection."

"In exchange, you will get a backstage look in the process and discoveries in his treasure trove and a chance to be the first to know about opportunities where we sell stuff or give some of it away," he said. "And you can even get your own box of space junk as one of the Kickstarter rewards."

Backers who pledge $50 or more will receive an envelope or box of Tiziou's "space junk," including postcards, vintage NASA prints, postmarked envelopes (or philatelic covers), pins, patches, buttons and coins. Supporters who give $500 or more will also receive one of Tiziou's space bits, "one of the small fragments of spacecraft or flown material custom bagged and labeled by Jacques that he loved to share with space enthusiasts like you."

The Kickstarter campaign, which runs through April 1, has a goal of $30,000. As of Friday (March 15), more than half had been pledged by 100 backers.

"It is the strange inheritance my father left me and I need your help to get it to the right homes," said JJ. "So I invite you to join me in this strange adventure of space exploration."

Watch a video about Jacques Tiziou's archives and his son's 'space junk' Kickstarter campaign on collectSPACE.

•  'Destination Moon' Exhibit Marks Return to Houston for Apollo 11 Spacecraft 
•  Moonshots and Snapshots of Project Apollo 
•  Space History Photos 

 Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2019 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Lockheed Martin is an American aerospace company that is building the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle for NASA. The company has over 100 years of aerospace experience, from the earliest transcontinental flights to the latest planetary probes.    

Lockheed Martin was formed in 1995 after a merger of Lockheed Corp. and Martin Marietta, which both had decades of aerospace experience behind them. (Martin Marietta was formed in 1961 in a merger of Glenn L. Martin Co. and American Marietta Corp.) The companies' aircraft have set records and achieved milestones in aviation and space exploration:

• In 1928, the first nonstop transcontinental flight was completed in a Lockheed Vega, a four-passenger wooden monoplane. 
• In 1930, Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, set a transcontinental speed record in a Lockheed Sirius. 
• In 1932, Amelia Earhart made her solo transatlantic flight in a Lockheed Vega.
• In 1937, Earhart flew a Lockheed Model 10 Electra in her ill-fated around-the-world flight.
• In 1955, the company's top-secret U2 reconnaissance aircraft made its first flight. 
• In 1957, the first Vanguard rocket, built by the Martin company, was launched. 
• In 1974, Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane sets a speed record — 3 hours 45 minutes from London to Los Angeles.

Lockheed Corp.'s projects also included the Hubble Space Telescope, the Apollo launch escape system and the Corona surveillance satellite series. Martin Marietta was known for spacecraft such as the Viking Mars landers and the Magellan Venus spacecraft.

In aerospace, some of Lockheed Martin's major projects today include the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane, the C-130 Hercules military transport, the P3-Orion maritime patrol aircraft, and the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter (with Boeing), according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In space, Lockheed Martin is known for the Titan IV and Atlas launch vehicles and the Trident II submarine-based missile. Lockheed is also part of the joint venture International Launch Services, along with Russian companies Energia and Khrunichev. ILS markets Atlas and Proton launch services around the world.

In recent years, Lockheed built the external tank for the space shuttle and was part of the former joint Lockheed-Boeing company United Space Alliance, which operated and managed the shuttle fleet. Lockheed has also built several Mars spacecraft, including Mars Phoenix, which explored the Red Planet's south pole, and Mars InSight, which is targeted for a Mars landing in November 2018.. The company also constructed the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which serves as a communications relay for the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers.

In 2017, Lockheed Martin unveiled details for a Mars Base Camp project that would allow astronauts to perform 1,000-day missions. The architecture includes a Mars Ascent/Descent Vehicle that would travel from a space station to head to Mars, before returning to the space station again. The crew quarters is expected to be based on the Orion spacecraft's design. Closer to home, Lockheed Martin is one of several companies participating in early contracts for the Deep Space Gateway, a proposed NASA space station that would orbit the moon.

Orion contract awarded

The company faced stiff competition for the lucrative Orion contract when it was announced in 2004. Lockheed went toe-to-toe with Northrop Grumman and Boeing before winning the contract. It was valued at up to $8.15 billion when it was awarded in August 2006.

At the time, a spokeswoman said the employees were "humbled and excited" about winning the contract. "Work already is under way and we are fully focused on the vital tasks that lie ahead to meet NASA's requirements for the program," said Joanne Maguire, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, in an Aug. 31, 2006 news release.

But Orion's future fell into doubt in 2010, after President Obama cancelled the planned Constellation program. By that point, NASA had already spent $5 billion on the development. NASA hinted the spacecraft could be repurposed in April 2011. One month later, the agency unveiled a new plan to develop a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle based on the Orion spacecraft designs.

"We made this choice based on the progress that's been made to date," Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said to reporters on May 24, 2011. "It made the most sense to stick with it (the Orion design)." [Infographic: Orion Explained: NASA's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle]

In November 2012, engineers discovered cracks in the spacecraft after performing a test that subjected the spacecraft to high pressure. But NASA's Rachel Kraft told Space.com that the hardware would only need a repair, not a remanufacture.

A flexible craft

Orion's resemblance to the Apollo command module is only skin-deep. Orion can carry up to six astronauts instead of Apollo's maximum of three. Further, its heat shield is constructed of newer substances, and its computer systems, of course, include 2010s technology — a leap forward to what was available to NASA in the 1960s.

The first space-based test of Orion took place Dec. 5, 2014. The spacecraft passed all major objectives. It orbited Earth twice and re-entered the atmosphere at a velocity not seen since the Apollo moon era of the 1960s and 1970s. 

The flight was called the Orion Exploration Flight Test-1. Riding aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket, Orion rocketed to orbit to an altitude of more than 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) above Earth — about 15 times the altitude of the International Space Station.

That high altitude led to a high-speed re-entry of 20,000 mph (32,000 km/h). This was supposed to demonstrate the strength of the heat shield when bringing back astronauts from destinations such as an asteroid or the moon.

"We are going to get about 84 percent of a lunar entry velocity, which is really going to stress the heat shield, which is exactly what we're trying to do," said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager, in 2012.

In the long term, Orion will launch aboard NASA's Space Launch System, which is a heavy-lift rocket still being developed. The two systems are scheduled for their first flight test together in 2019 or 2020, when SLS will propel Orion into space for an uncrewed flight around the moon. (Riding along with Orion will be 13 CubeSats to explore deep space.) Human flights are expected in the 2020s.

Additional resources

• NASA's Exploration website tells more about Orion and its mission.
• Find news and information about the Orion program from Lockheed Martin.