Know What's Happening in Aerospace
Know What's Happening in Aerospace
China tests 7.5‑tonne hydrogen‑turboprop cargo plane
China’s Aero Engine Corporation flew a 7.5‑tonne unmanned cargo aircraft powered by a 1‑megawatt hydrogen turboprop for 16 minutes, covering 36 km at 220 km/h and 300 m altitude. The test demonstrates the engine’s reliability and the country’s claim of a fully domestic hydrogen‑engine supply chain.
SpaceX lifted off a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral on March 9, 2026, deploying EchoStar‑25, a direct‑to‑home television satellite for Dish Network. The booster, B1085, completed its 14th flight and landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking the vessel’s 146th touchdown and SpaceX’s 583rd booster recovery. EchoStar‑25, built on Lanteris’ 1300 series bus, will operate in Ku‑ and Ka‑band frequencies from 110° W longitude. The launch follows EchoStar’s recent $17 billion spectrum sale to SpaceX for its Starlink Mobile service.
Pivotal is piloting a proof‑of‑concept with Hyde County, N.C., and Code Blue Resources to deploy FAA Part 103 ultralight eVTOL aircraft for emergency medical response. Flight‑trained paramedics will serve as volunteer pilots, delivering rapid advanced care to high‑acuity scenes without needing...
Qatar Airways announced a limited series of repatriation flights operating from Doha on March 10‑12, aimed at passengers whose bookings were disrupted by the Iran‑related conflict. The temporary schedule covers major cities such as London, Dallas, Istanbul, Mumbai, Madrid, Moscow and...
Swissto12, founded by Emile de Rijk, is reshaping geostationary orbit (GEO) access by building smaller, more flexible satellites that cut launch costs and delivery times. The CEO discussed the company’s advanced payload technology, its relevance to sovereign space initiatives, and...
EHang has signed a strategic partnership with Turkey’s telecom giant Türk Telekom and its tech subsidiary Argela to launch pilotless eVTOL services across the country. The deal integrates EHang’s certified EH216‑S aircraft with Argela’s unmanned traffic management (UTM) platform and...
Ghana’s Air Force took delivery of its first Airbus H175 helicopter on 5 March 2026, arriving from France after technical acceptance. The aircraft joins a parliamentary‑approved procurement that also includes an H160 and a Dassault Falcon 6X, aimed at modernising an ageing fleet....
AeroVironment secured a three‑year, $97.4 million contract from the U.S. Army’s Aviation and Missile Technology Consortium to develop the Generative Environment for the Next Era of Spectral Imaging Stimulators (GENESIS). The program will deliver a hardware‑in‑the‑loop test environment at Redstone Arsenal,...
The February 2026 Aerospace Update outlines AI’s expanding role in optimizing aerospace operations, safety, and strategic planning. It highlights microgravity biomanufacturing as a promising yet IP‑intensive frontier, while noting Thinkorbital’s recent seed round as evidence of rising investment in orbital technologies....
The U.S. Department of Transportation and FAA announced eight Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Integration Pilot Program projects spanning 26 states, slated to begin operations by summer 2026. The selected initiatives encompass urban air‑taxi services, regional passenger routes, cargo logistics,...
The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Hughes Network Services a contract under its RAPID program to support the STAR‑FISH procurement for space data networking experimentation. The effort targets resilient, hybrid satellite‑terrestrial networks that can dynamically route data across multiple domains....
Additive manufacturing is gaining momentum in aerospace and defense, with 41% of industry leaders forecasting a rapid acceleration this year. GE Aerospace announced a $1 billion U.S. investment, including a $115 million spend to expand 3D metal‑printing capacity at its Cincinnati hub...
Airbus delivered just 35 aircraft in February, a sharp drop from its annual target of 870 deliveries. The A320neo family made up 25 of those planes, while A220‑300 deliveries rose to eight and the A350 program added two jets, leaving...
The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program announced the 11 companies selected for prototype orders in the first phase, known as Gauntlet I, of a two‑year effort to field hundreds of thousands of low‑cost one‑way attack drones. The finalists—ranked from Skycutter to...
American Airlines has permanently removed its seasonal Miami‑Paris route, ending a winter‑only service that carried just over 53,000 round‑trip passengers in the last year. The cancellation reduces American’s Miami‑Europe weekly departures from 31 to 24, a 23% cut and the...
The Boeing 777X, slated for its first delivery in 2027, carries a historic list price of roughly $442 million, though airlines negotiate substantially lower figures. Program delays have already cost Boeing about $15 billion, pushing the timeline and adding financial pressure. Major carriers...
Michigan’s State Capitol has fully deployed Airspace Link’s AirHub Portal, a drone operations management system that provides real‑time monitoring of both unmanned and manned aircraft over the Capitol complex. The platform aggregates data from Remote ID, ADS‑B, radar, RF detectors...
Airbus is building an integrated connectivity platform that merges terrestrial mobile infrastructure with low‑Earth‑orbit satellite constellations to deliver uninterrupted, gate‑to‑gate broadband for aircraft. The initiative includes a successful 5G non‑terrestrial network trial with Eutelsat’s OneWeb and the launch of the...
Airbus inaugurated an 880,000‑sq‑ft technology centre in Bengaluru, expanding its ‘Make in India’ footprint. The campus, designed for up to 5,000 staff, consolidates engineering, digital, customer services and procurement functions under one roof. Indian engineers will now support the full...
Finnair Cargo has renewed its partnership with Accelya, keeping the Accelya Cargo platform as the backbone of its commercial, operational, ground‑handling and revenue‑accounting functions. The platform automates rating, warehouse operations, billing and settlement, delivering end‑to‑end accuracy across Finnair’s cargo network....
China is targeting a crewed lunar landing before the decade ends, and a new Nature Astronomy study highlights the Rimae Bode region on the near‑side as a prime candidate. The volcanic‑rich area meets engineering constraints—flat terrain, low latitude, and reliable communications—while...
NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center teamed with Johnson Space Center, White Sands Test Facility, and Marshall Space Flight Center to create a dedicated flammability test for barrier material assemblies. The test evaluates how effectively these barriers can isolate a cabin...
North Korea’s latest five‑year defense plan formally prioritizes “special assets for attacking enemy satellites,” marking its first official commitment to counter‑space weapons. Analysts see this as a potential move toward kinetic or nuclear anti‑satellite (ASAT) systems that could threaten the...
Bridges Air Cargo became the launch customer for Embraer’s newly converted E‑Freighter, completing its first commercial flight from Cologne to Larnaca on March 9. The jet, a modified Embraer 190, is slated to serve Bridges Worldwide’s express‑shipping network across Europe, the Middle...
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) unveiled its 2026 Priority Issues, a roadmap spanning aviation, national security, research and development, and space. The agenda stresses modernizing air traffic control via NextGen, advancing autonomous flight, bolstering the defense industrial...
Skylo is pursuing a partner‑centric satellite messaging model, leasing capacity from Viasat and EchoStar rather than building its own constellation. At Mobile World Congress the CEO highlighted a network that now spans 36 countries, supports over 20 carrier interfaces and...
NASA will host a live Earth‑to‑space Q&A with astronauts Jack Hathaway and Chris Williams aboard the International Space Station. The session, scheduled for 12:05 p.m. EDT on March 11, will be streamed on the Learn With NASA YouTube channel and organized by the...
British Airways remains the largest European carrier to the United States, moving 7.6 million passengers between December 2024 and November 2025. Its overall US load factor of 83 % placed it 13th among European airlines, trailing carriers such as TAP and Air France. The...
American Airlines has launched a summer service from Edinburgh to New York JFK, expanding its transatlantic footprint in Scotland. The new route joins the Philadelphia‑Edinburgh flight that resumed last year, giving the airport two direct US connections. The airline will operate...
SkyDrive announced an agreement with Japan’s Civil Aviation Bureau on a General Certification Plan for its SD‑05 eVTOL, defining the compliance pathway for type certification. The plan complements existing structural, motor and noise certification submissions currently under review. Earlier this...
AvSales Talent and Texarkana College have launched the first credentialed training program for business aviation sales professionals, a six‑week Aviation Professional Sales Certificate beginning March 23. The curriculum covers high‑net‑worth client psychology, consultative sales methods, deal structuring and aviation fundamentals, delivered...
A new pre‑print by NASA JPL’s Slava Turyshev outlines five terraforming milestones for Mars and quantifies the massive resources required at each stage. To raise surface pressure to just 1 mbar would need roughly the mass of Mars’s moon Deimos, while...
PBS Aerospace, the U.S. arm of Czech PBS Group, landed a multi‑year subcontract with California‑based Zone 5 Technologies valued at several tens of millions of dollars. The agreement tasks the Roswell, Georgia plant—recently expanded with a $20 million investment—to produce the...
Israeli drone maker Aero‑Sentinel announced a new order from a returning U.S. customer for its low‑acoustic Aerosol G2 UAV. The system, praised for a 14.9‑decibel signature at one kilometre, will support intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and rapid‑deployment missions. Aero‑Sentinel highlighted...
By the way, speaking of Shahed-136s. Back in 2022-2023, when Iran first supplied them to Russia and they were first used on a large scale against Ukraine, they were fairly simple loitering munitions -- a slow, buzzing two-stroke engine whining high...
Bell’s X-76 Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Is DARPA’s Newest X-Plane Planned to fly in 2028, the X-76 will explore technologies for fast-flying runway-independent aircraft with folding rotors, crewed and uncrewed. https://t.co/Q9nYT16ovV
Avio announced a $65 million contract with Defense Systems and Solutions to develop, qualify and initially produce a solid‑rocket motor for air‑defence applications. The three‑year deal leverages Avio’s Italian plant while planning full‑scale production at its new Hurt, Virginia facility from...
Air New Zealand suspends FY26 outlook, flags fare and network changes as fuel prices soar https://t.co/YMJof0iXP0
Unfortunately, that's EXACTLY what the video shows -- the interceptor heading right toward Sitra where the impact reportedly occurred. Red line is the approximate trajectory of the interceptor, white line is the point of view from the video. https://t.co/jvOPjH0Yme
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has resumed operations in Riga, launching a new daily route to Copenhagen. The service marks the airline’s return after a multi‑year hiatus, restoring a key north‑south corridor for the Baltic region. By linking Latvia’s capital with a...
NASA will hold a news conference on Thursday, March 12, at 3:00 pm ET "after the conclusion of an Artemis II Flight Readiness Review." Watch on YouTube. Isaacman, Glaze, Honeycutt, Quinn, Knight. https://t.co/J4EfWNTiX9 Artemis II is still in the VAB. No date...
I don't know who needs to hear this, but Tomahawk Block IV can dive vertically. https://t.co/rcP0BgLqGH
Israeli UAV maker Steadicopter has signed a services agreement with U.S.-based flyAlchemy to conduct flight demonstrations and operational evaluations of its Black Eagle 50E rotary drone on American soil. The partnership will focus on payload integration, regulatory alignment, and mission‑development activities...
Nope, TLAMs use terrain contour matching which means it CAN'T come directly from over the water.
International collaboration. Breakthrough technology. Sovereign astronauts. The very best of humanity is projected into space. 🤝 https://t.co/UEj6BuZYak
The Morocco‑West Africa air cargo corridor relies heavily on passenger belly space, with dedicated freighter lift remaining inconsistent and often shrinking. Royal Air Maroc’s new Casablanca‑Dakar freighter marks a strategic move, yet overall capacity stays fragmented, especially on secondary routes...
The growth of Starbase over the last decade, from nothing to arguably the world's premiere rocket factory, is remarkable. This image of V3 rolling out is gorgeous. https://t.co/vVNpNoROaJ
B-52s Arrive At U.K. Base As Air Campaign Over Iran Grinds On Three of the strategic bombers join a growing cadre of U.S. Air Force long-range strike assets deployed at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom. Back at it live updating: https://t.co/p2AoYPCPkv
My latest in @ForeignPolicy: with a war in the Middle East, the world appears to have missed that North Korea is now officially getting into the space weapons game (with strong incentives to put nukes in space). My analysis: https://t.co/z11CO5oeyP
Here's the official word: Booster 19 will perform a series of tests to activate Pad 2. ❤️🚀 https://t.co/XaOvA5XgFg
The US Army is rushing Ukrainian cheap drone interceptors to the Middle East, which is a hugely welcome development. These are cost-effective, battlefield-tested solutions for defeating Shaheds & should proliferate quickly. https://t.co/bfY0oYf45R
