aerospace

A team of engineering students from The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, captured the overall championship at the NASA 2026 Student Launch Initiative (NSLI) after a nine-month engineering challenge that culminated in a final launch event, with the awards announced by NASA on June 3.

NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft reached a major milestone Friday, June 5, when it flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time.   The 81-minute flight achieved a speed of Mach 1.1 (approximately 713 mph) at an altitude of 43,400 feet, with the X-59 performing as expected. For NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less, the plane’s instruments were the only indication of flying supersonic — exact…

Researchers are developing a laser-based manufacturing technique that could enable astronauts to build tools, structures and infrastructure on the moon using materials already available there.

Rocket launches this week According to tracking from Next SpaceFlight, Chinese aerospace firm Landspace’s ZhuQue-2E Block 2 is scheduled to lift off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China at 4:20 a.m. EST on Tuesday, June 9. The ZhuQue-2E is a medium-lift rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane — the first methane-fueled vehicle Continue reading "SpaceX and Rocket Lab set for lifto…

Paris and Berlin conclude firms involved unable to agree on way forward in blow to Europe’s common defence push France and Germany have concluded that the companies involved in building a joint fighter jet will not be able to reach an agreement and have abandoned the project, officials in Berlin have said in a blow to Europe’s common defence efforts. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the…

On June 5, 2026, NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year. NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph). The flight lasted 81 minutes, with the team focusing o…

Italian aerospace tooling specialist Eligio Re Fraschini partnered with robotic additive manufacturing company Caracol on a co-funded pilot project to test whether wire arc additive manufacturing could viably replace conventional methods for complex aerospace tooling components.  The target was a spar tool used in carbon fiber lamination processes, a component defined by tight tolerances, co…

This experimental plane, which reached supersonic speeds yesterday, is designed to travel faster than the speed of sound without creating bothersome sonic booms

NASA’s X-59 aircraft breaks the sound barrier, pioneering a future of quiet supersonic travel.

Rocket scientists have always faced a trade-off in propulsion technologies. Chemical rockets can provide lots of oomph, but burn through fuel so quickly they can only do so for a few minutes. Electric propulsion, on the other hand, can run for days, but the pushing power they provide is miniscule compared to their chemical cousins. A new paper in the Journal of Propulsion and Power from researche…

HMS Prince of Wales expected to sail ‘in the coming days’ according to British government spokesperson A technical issue has been detected on the UK navy’s flagship as it was docked in Norway, after the warship worked with Nato and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the government has said. Earlier this month, the HMS Prince of Wales – one of Britain’s two flagship aircraft carriers built for £…

Scientific Reports, Published online: 06 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-55955-2 Risk-sensitive mean-field control of large-scale UAV Swarms for stochastic disaster tracking and robust first response

NASA's X-59 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time on Friday (June 5), reaching a top speed of about Mach 1.1.

NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft marked a major milestone Friday, June 5, when it flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year.  NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph) and altitude of 43,400…

NASA announced the Massachusetts Institute of Technology project, Exploration-Class Lunar Integrated Power SystEm, as the first place winner for the 2026 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition, which challenges students to bridge gaps in aerospace technology by innovating new system concepts and prototypes.  Another team from the same university won seco…

The LINK spacecraft designed to capture and boost NASA’s Swift observatory arrived at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, June 5. The post Robotic Spacecraft for Swift Boost Mission Arrives at NASA Wallops appeared first on NASA Science .

Scientific Reports, Published online: 05 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-55825-x A multi-mechanism chaotic evolution approach for 3D path planning of UAVs

Overpressure from the Blue Origin blast shattered windows at a hangar about a mile away from the pad.

A new imaging framework improves how unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) radar systems reconstruct three-dimensional (3D) scenes in complex urban environments. By combining three-dimensional back projection with compressive sensing, the method overcomes a long-standing low-altitude imaging problem known as channel migration. The result is more accurate 3D reconstruction of buildings and ground features…