From the commercial-aircraft ramp-up and small-UAV explosion to U.S. defense budget pressures and Europe’s response to Russian aggression, 2016 will be a dynamic year for the aerospace and defense industry.
SpaceX is celebrating the first successful touchdown on land of an orbital-class booster, the first step toward a potential paradigm shift in easing human access to space.
In the next 10 years, as major spacefaring nations renew their fleets, the space-launch sector will be molded by the growing popularity of small satellites, increasing commercialization of space transportation, reusable launch vehicles and manned space programs.
Expanded Tables Online Download expanded specifications on in-production and under-development launch vehicles and search more than 3,100 other systems at AviationWeek.com/specs
Saab ships laminar wing Section as Airbus A340-300 moves toward 2017 flight tests; NASA fires 3-D-sprinted rocket motor; Clean Sky tests of advanced business-jet design; Sea-Tac RFP for biofuel study; U.K. pushes out R&D commitment to 2026.
Through partnerships and investments, defense primes and OEMs are increasingly turning the page away from the old playbook of acquiring and subsuming new technology.
France’s defense ministry will begin work on three new major space-system developments in the coming year, including an international collaboration with Germany in the area of remote sensing and an operational follow-on to the Elisa signals-intelligence demo.
2015 could well turn up in the history books as the year humankind finally realized it could be a spacefairing species, and started reaping the benefits.
UP Aerospace takes its experience building and operating low-cost suborbital sounding rockets and applies it to a dedicated launch vehicle for tiny cubesats.
The trick to making international collaboration work applies for 21st-century human space exploration just as it did for railroads in the 19th—standard interfaces.
Which comes first, small satellites or small launch vehicles? With the growth in plans for cubesat constellations, small booster development is moving into high gear.
Pentagon thinkers consider a life beyond Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) and Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) systems as reliance on and vulnerability to satcom systems grows.
With its Cygnus large cargo carriers, Orbital has an eye toward the post-ISS world, when NASA expects to be operating in cislunar space while private companies try to make a profit in orbit much closer to Earth.
The launch of an upgraded Orbital ATK Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft with more than 7,000 lb. of supplies for the International Space Station moves the orbiting outpost back toward its normal stock of consumables and gives on-board scientific research a boost.
The new business should bring XCOR co-founder Jeff Greason closer to the passion he has carried since he left the computer industry as an Intel executive to join the old Rotary Rocket startup.
