Aircraft
Aerospace firm Blue Origin has already conducted wind tunnel and engine tests, in the development of its reusable orbital Space Vehicle. Last week, however, the company took a step forward in the development of its New Shepard suborbital system – at its West Texas launch site, the company conducted a successful pad escape test, in which a full-scale crew capsule was ejected from a launch vehicle simulator. Read More
The United States Air Force (USAF) has released the results of last August’s third test of the X-51a Waverider, which resulted in the crash of the unmanned scramjet demonstrator. At a press teleconference featuring the Program Manager for Air Force Research Laboratory, Charles Brink, it was confirmed that a malfunctioning fin was the cause of the crash. However, engineers are confident of correcting the fault in time for the fourth test flight scheduled for (Northern Hemisphere) late spring or early summer of next year. Read More
CHEOPS, the first ESA “small mission,” will study super-Earths
The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to give existing orbiting probes, such as COROT and Kepler, a helping hand in studying super-Earths. Selected from 26 proposals, the CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) spacecraft is the first S-class (“small”) mission in the ESA’s Science Programme. A partnership between the ESA and the Swiss Space Office, CHEOPS will not seek out new exoplanets, but will instead target nearby, bright stars that are already known to have orbiting planets. Read More
After strapping on its missiles in February shortly after its first night flight, the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) version of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35A, completed its first in-flight weapons release on October 16 in a flight conducted over the China Lake test range in California. Read More
U.S. Air Force goes vortex surfing to cut fuel consumption
The United States Air Force is taking flying lessons from geese and spiny lobsters. This may seem like the mother of all bureaucratic errors, but there’s actually some pretty solid science behind it. In exploiting a phenomenon known as “vortex surfing,” the USAF has found that by having C-17 cargo planes flying in formation, it can reduce fuel consumption by up to ten percent. Read More
Another commercial spaceflight venture has taken a step forward. Early this month, aerospace firm Blue Origin successful test fired its 100,000 lb (444,840 N) thrust BE-3 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine thrust chamber. The full-power static fire test took place at the E-1 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi and is part of Blue Origin’s program to develop a launch system for its manned Space Vehicle. Read More
The efforts of Maryland University's Gamera II team in snaring the US$250,000 Sikorsky Prize for human-powered helicopter flight have garnered much attention (not least from Gizmag) in recent months, and with good reason. But the team is by no means alone in chasing down its sadistic requirements set by the American Helicopter Society in 1980. First tested in August, The Atlas helicopter, by human-powered vehicle specialists AeroVelo, is the latest machine to enter the fray, and has already flown successfully, becoming only the fourth human-powered helicopter to do so. Read More
- "Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are" – Felix Baumgartner, standing outside his capsule at an altitude of 24 miles (39 km) on October 14, 2012.
Fifteen years ago, Utah-based prospector William A. Barnes was on a solo gold-dredging expedition in the wilds of Northern California. One night, he heard something disturbing the rocks in the canyon above his campsite. He proceeded to watch as that indistinct “something” came trudging downhill, until it stood only about three feet (0.9 meters) from his tent. At that point, upon seeing its size, shape, and profile against the brightly-moonlit quartz hillside, he became a firm believer in the legendary creature commonly referred to as Bigfoot or Sasquatch. In the years since, he has become obsessed with researching the animals. Now, as the founder of The Falcon Project, he hopes to prove their existence once and for all – with the help of a state-of-the-art remote-control camera-equipped airship. Read More
Two Global Hawk unmanned aircraft have flown in close formation at distances as close as 30 feet (9 m) for the first time. The series of flights took place between January 11 and May 30 this year and marked a major milestone on the way to demonstrating the first autonomous aerial refueling between two unmanned, high-altitude aircraft as part of DARPA’s Autonomous High-Altitude Refueling (AHR) program. Read More
