Sustainable aviation and advanced air mobility are the focus of the fifth round of research projects selected under NASA’s University Leadership Initiative.
In the first such move by a leader in the advanced air mobility market, Joby Aviation has acquired Austrian radar designer Inras to prepare for more complex, and eventually autonomous, operations of its electric urban air taxi.
Behind the scenes of the aviation and telecommunications industries’ clash over 5G wireless transmissions, aviation standards organization RTCA is developing performance specifications for a new generation of radio altimeters that would be hardened against 5G interference.
Telecommunications giants AT&T and Verizon have refused a high-level U.S. government appeal to delay activating new 5G wireless networks on Jan. 5 as scheduled, offering instead to draw temporary exclusion zones around certain airports to protect against the possibility of interference with aircraft radio altimeters.
As ZeroAvia prepares to fly its modified Dornier 228 hydrogen-electric propulsion system testbed, details of the mobile refueling system that will support flight testing are emerging.
Denmark’s government has set the goal of all domestic aviation being fossil-free by 2030, potentially through a combination of sustainable aviation fuel and electric and hydrogen propulsion.
UK startup Electric Aircraft Group and the University of Nottingham plan to establish a joint venture to develop megawatt-class electric propulsion systems.
Although Brazilian airlines Azul and GOL are fierce competitors, both believe there are vast opportunities for urban mobility in Brazil and are each working to create a new mode of transport in the country.
BAE Systems and Embraer are teaming up to study potential military missions for the Brazilian OEM’s Eve electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
The merger values the electric air taxi developer at $2.4 billion, a price backed up by the largest conditional orderbook in the advanced air mobility market.
The energy requirements of future aircraft must be reduced by at least half by 2050 if aviation is to achieve the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century, according to a new aviation strategy adopted by German national aviation research agency DLR.
Europe is expanding its technology base for hydrogen propulsion as the region’s industry pushes to field zero-emissions commercial aircraft by the mid-2030s.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Harbour Air Seaplanes has begun modifying a second de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver to electric propulsion and will begin certification flight testing in 2022.
Archer has flown its Maker technology demonstrator, joining other leaders in the electric vertical takeoff and landing industry in flying a vehicle similar in scale to its planned urban air taxi.
Completion of Vertical Aerospace’s going-public merger with blank-check company Broadstone Acquisition on Dec. 16 took the total announced funding raised in 2021 by the nascent advanced air mobility industry to more than $5 billion.
