Although investigators appear to be in broad agreement that wear in the bearings of the main engine turbopump is the “most probable” cause of the explosion that destroyed an Orbital ATK Antares launch vehicle on a crew resupply mission to the International Space Station last October, questions remain over what caused the wear in the first place.
NASA is spending too much of its tight budget on Earth science missions and not enough on space exploration, according to House Republican lawmakers who also faulted the U.S. space agency on its most ambitious new exploration program.
Just days after BAE Systems announced it would not attend the Paris air show, Italian defense and aerospace group Finmeccanica said it will greatly reduce its presence at the event as the company continues its restructuring and cost-reduction programs.
Fatigue cracks discovered in the airframes of several Swiss air force Northrop F-5 Tigers have forced the Swiss defense ministry to retire 10 aircraft.
Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy have completed the first inflight dry hookup of the X-47B unmanned combat air system demonstrator (UACS-D) and a tanker in a precursor to the first air-to-air refueling of an unmanned aircraft.
AEL Sistemas, the Brazil-based subsidiary of Israel’s Elbit, is showing prototypes of the cockpit hardware planned for Brazil’s Saab Gripen fighter at the LAAD defense and security show in Rio De Janeiro.
The U.S. Marine Corps has adopted a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) acquisition approach since last year that both uses and deviates from best practices as defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog agency says.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has called for greater cooperation between civil and military air traffic management agencies after a significant increase in the number of proximity incidents between what it calls “non-cooperative military traffic.”
The Eurofighter consortium says a final assembly line for the Typhoon could be set up in Indonesia if the combat aircraft is selected to replace that country’s aging fleet of F-5 Tigers.
SpaceX is thought to be focusing on static friction in an engine throttle valve as the prime suspect for the loss of the Falcon 9 first stage during the third attempt at recovering the booster.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN’s ASTRO AEROSPACE delivered Deployable Tower Assembly (DTA) for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to Northrop’s Space Park facility in Redondo Beach, CA; DTA supports spacecraft and the telescope structures. RAYTHEON plans to test a new multi-mode seeker for Tomahawk cruise missile in second quarter captive flight; test is key milestone in Tomahawk modernization and will help enable missile to strike moving targets on land and sea.
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno says his choice of planning to reuse only the BE-4 engines – not the entire first stage – of the company’s new Vulcan rocket was driven purely by the economics.
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno says Aerojet Rocketdyne’s claim of delivering an AR-1 rocket engine capable of operating on the Atlas V or Vulcan vehicles by 2018 is “ridiculous.”
While maintaining strong support for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, lawmakers are worrying about the efficacy and cost of the Automated Logistics Information System (ALIS), the program’s gee-whiz maintenance tool.
The high cost and ambitious scope of two Brazilian military projects will lead to delays in the launching of other major projects, according to industry executives at the LAAD defense and security show here.
Human explorers would find many uses for an international “Moon station” after the International Space Station is shut down in the coming decade, says Johann-Dietrich Woerner, head of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
In response to a recent clarion call by the U.S. Navy to gain greater range for its missile attacks, Boeing says it has developed a kit to extend the range of its Harpoon antiship missile, in part by reducing the size of its warhead.
From new users to repeat customers, the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space reports a growing interest in the International Space Station as a laboratory research platform.
NovaWurks has entered a commercial agreement with a Canadian startup to build a 40-satellite constellation of optical platforms using the mass-produced “satlets” it is developing with funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Darpa’s Phoenix satellite-recovery project.
Although Ad Astra Rocket Co. isn’t giving up on aspirations of interplanetary travel, the 10-year-old enterprise is focused firmly in the near term on ground-level refinements and a key demonstration of its novel plasma propulsion technologies through a new NASA Advanced Exploration Systems partnership agreement.
Honeywell, Inmarsat and satcoms technology specialist Kymeta are developing a Ka-band antenna for business and commercial aviation that should offer better broadband service and suit installation in smaller aircraft.
