Aerospace

The U.S. Department of Defense has directed more than $700 million toward a suite of high-priority research and development initiatives on June 16, 2025. The announcement, posted on the DoD website, signals a push into frontier AI, quantum sensing and advanced battlespace simulation. Headlining the investments were a landmark prototype agreement with OpenAI and significant…

[Last updated on June 18, 2025] Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently hinted that AI would result in jobs cuts across the e-commerce giant, declaring “we will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today” as the company accelerates development of over 1,000 generative AI applications. He counseled employees to begin…

The June 2025 executive order dismantles a regulatory framework that has kept American skies silent of sonic booms since 1973. For over five decades, federal regulations have prohibited any civilian aircraft from flying faster than the speed of sound over U.S. territory, regardless of whether the aircraft actually produced a disruptive sonic boom. This blanket…

The Europa Lander was supposed to involve a voyage to the namesake moon of Jupiter. NASA, however, has left it unfunded for several years and the mission was effectively deprioritized by the 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, leaving it essentially mothballed. The craft’s fate leave the space agency and its partners to decide whether a…

Assembly and testing of NASA’s Artemis III Orion spacecraft are progressing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This spacecraft is slated to carry astronauts on the first crewed lunar landing mission since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Recent milestones included the initial power-on of the crew module’s core avionics, which include two redundant vehicle-management computers…

Researchers have chased practical electric aviation for decades, especially for short‑haul routes, but progress remains slow. Projects such as all-electric helicopter Sikorsky Firefly (2010), the Airbus E-Fan (2017), the experimental aircraft NASA’s X-57 Maxwell (2023), and nine-passenger commuter Tecnam’s P-Volt (2023) stalled when current batteries proved too heavy, delivered too little energy, or degraded faster…

Los Angeles is thinking outside of the box in planning for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The idea? Use electric air taxis to address its notorious traffic. L.A.’s mayor, Karen Bass, has even mused about an (almost) car-free Games. The company making the craft, Archer Aviation, hopes to enable 10–20 minute flights between vertiports.…

Blue Origin broke into the military’s most critical space launch market Friday, securing a multi-billion dollar share alongside SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in new U.S. Space Force contracts worth up to $13.7 billion designed to ensure access to orbit for national security missions through 2032. The contract awards are a significant expansion of the…

This past week, Boeing secured a multi-billion dollar contract for the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter program last week, while tech rivals Anthropic and DataBricks formed a $100 million partnership as R&D stocks broadly declined amid market uncertainty. Meanwhile, there were mixed signals for the AI market, and the R&D World Index (RDWI) for the…

As NASA prepares for astronauts’ return to the Moon through the Artemis program, even the most minor details inside a spacesuit can make a big difference. The top priority is ensuring astronauts can breathe safely and efficiently during long hours on the lunar surface. In pursuit of that goal, NASA has teamed up with German…

If you’ve ever wondered what’s happening aboard the International Space Station — beyond the amazing views and zero-gravity stunts — a new podcast is ready to take you inside the science. The ISS National Laboratory has launched Between a Rocket and a Hard Space, a fascinating podcast that gives listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the discoveries,…

NASA has announced the elimination of its chief scientist position and the closure of several internal offices, including the Office of Technology Policy and Strategy and the agency’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) branch. According to Reuters, the move, which affects at least 23 employees, is part of a broader reorganization aligned with federal…

In 1926, British aerodynamicist Hermann Glauert introduced an equation that shaped a century of wind turbine development — a third-order polynomial that determines the optimum axial induction factor. Yet, at Penn State nearly one hundred years later, Divya Tyagi, an engineering student revisited and improved this classical result by deriving missing analytical approaches for rotor…

Could a new telescope unearth cosmic recipes for life? Can a cell patch rescue fading eyesight? And what’s with bubbles “galloping” in a lab? This week’s research roundup probes the surprising frontiers of astronomy, medicine, archaeology, and more — raising as many questions as it answers. Read on for highlights that challenge familiar assumptions and…

As NASA prepares to launch SPHEREx, another groundbreaking mission led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is set to hitch a ride. The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission consists of four small, suitcase-sized spacecraft designed and built by SwRI. While SPHEREx embarks on a quest to map the universe and…

NASA is poised to embark on an ambitious mission by launching the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, better known as SPHEREx. This high-tech space telescope is designed to conduct an unprecedented sky survey, offering a comprehensive look into the universe’s evolution and the potential for life beyond…

SpaceX’s satellite internet system, Starlink, just scored a major win with the FAA. The mission? Deploy 4,000 terminals over the next 12 to 18 months to upgrade the agency’s IT networks. This rollout—part of the FAA’s “TDM X” program—goes beyond enhancing network capacity. By integrating Starlink’s phased array antennas and laser-linked satellite mesh into remote…

The Boeing X‑37B Orbital Test Vehicle—a highly secretive, unmanned and reusable spaceplane from the United States Space Force—made an appearance today in an official photo circulating on social media. This image, captured via an onboard camera typically used for vehicle health monitoring during its seventh mission (OTV‑7), offers a glimpse of Earth from the X‑37B’s…

When cell phones first became ubiquitous, they allowed people to call from previously inconceivable places — the park, the swimming pool, the car, and everywhere else — but calling on the Moon? That remained firmly in the realm of sci-fi fantasy… until now. Because while you were busy doomscrolling, something truly astronomical was happening. Nokia…

A substantial fire disrupted operations at SPS Technologies’ manufacturing facility in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 17, 2025. SPS, a notable producer of aerospace fasteners—including Space Shuttle components—employs high-temperature forging, fine metal powder milling, and chemical electroplating to craft superalloy-based products. These hazardous-material processes had faced prior EPA citations for waste management lapses.…

As wildfire threats grow globally, NASA is tapping decades of aeronautics and Earth science expertise to support firefighters. Through its FireSense project — part of the Wildland Fires program — the agency is testing unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that gather real-time weather data over fire-prone areas. A recent field campaign in Missoula, Montana, demonstrated the…

[Blue Origin][/caption> Blue Origin‘s announcement of a 10% workforce reduction is not an isolated incident, but the latest sign of a significant belt-tightening across the aerospace sector. Joining companies like Boeing, Airbus, and Pratt & Whitney which have recently announced cuts, Blue Origin’s layoffs reflect a broader industry-wide push for efficiency as space companies race…

NASA and DARPA have unveiled plans to test a novel nuclear thermal rocket engine—a technology capable of tripling propulsion efficiency compared to conventional chemical rockets. The project, dubbed DRACO, hinges on recent advances in nuclear fuel, with General Atomics reporting significant progress in testing fuel elements capable of withstanding the extreme conditions of an Nuclear…

NASA missions with limited mass and power budgets have long demanded innovative communication systems. In response, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) developed Frontier Radio, which first flew in 2012 on the twin Van Allen Probes. This compact, radiation-tolerant radio became a critical component on several near- and deep-space missions, including Parker Solar Probe,…

Galaxy clusters rank among the most significant known structures in the Universe. Current models suggest they form when clumps of dark matter pull galaxies together, merging smaller groups into vast clusters containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. One such group is the Antlia Cluster (Abell S636), located roughly 130 million light-years away in the…