ASAP Aerospace Blog - By Page 12

NASA has brought a lot of technological advances with regard to aerospace and aviation, and they continue to strive to develop faster X-planes, futuristic aircraft concept including Boeing BWB. Some of these concepts are being tested on constantly and they have already started testing some of the new coming concepts. For example, NASA has been testing a scale model of the Boeing BWB in their Foot Subsonc Tunnel at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia. The principal of NASA’s Langley research Center is happy to announce the return of these type models back in their wind tunnel for testing. He mentions how these opportunities gives them the chance to work on more concepts for the future and come up with better ideas. X-planes are planes where the wings are merged with the body unlike the regular planes with a tube and the wings are sticking out from the sides. Also X-planes lack the regular tail that a conventional plane would have.

On August 21st 2016, Rich Smith wrote an article for The Motley fool talking about how SpaceX was able to secure a second manned spaceflight mission. NASA has asked Boeing and SpaceX to run a mission called the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability. The Commercial Crew Transpiration Capability mission is to transport US astronauts from Earth to the International Space Station and back.

We’ve reached an era where technology leads the world. Today’s technological capabilities have reached a point where we are able to send satellites to space very easily and enhance the activities that the satellite can function at while orbiting the earth in outer space. A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket was launched in July out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The information given by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has not been clear about the activities of the satellite but they only have mentioned and according to the ULA that the satellite has been designed or engineered for the support of national defense.

The World Largest Aircraft, the Airlander 10 has been approved to be airborne once more. An Aircraft first developed for the US Army’s North Grumman-led Long Endurance, multi intelligence vehicle contract by a company in the UK named Hybrid Air shut down their production due to lack of funds. It is approximately 92m (302ft) long in length, and has seen to have traveled 5000 ft. in altitude. Being able to travel a 5nm radius going 35kt (40.2773 MPH) on its most recent test run. The purpose for such aircraft is for surveillance, communications and passengers able to be aired for approximately 5 days with a pilot on board . Its reinstating test run was held in Cardington airfield in Bedfordshire at around 19:45 and arriving at 20:00 before sundown on August 17th. The Aircraft alone has set to be worth up to £25m (32,986,250 US dollars).

The Boeing Company announced today that they have reached an agreement with Embraer to collaborate on the KC-390 Program. The terms under this agreement stipulates that Embraer and Boeing will share specific technical knowledge between the two in order to evaluate the market and identify areas in which they can join their sales effort for more medium-lift military transport opportunities.

Airbus Group SE reports that they are nearing the final stages of securing a monumental order for up to 100 jetliners from AirAsia Bhd. Sources close to the ground level have all but confirmed that this deal is imminent and is just a matter of getting a few more additional commitments from AirAsia who is their biggest single-aisle aircraft customer.

Bird Aerosystems has specialized in the manufacturing of Special Mission Aircraft Solutions (ASIO) and Airborne Missile Protection Systems (AMPS) for different customers around the world, including NATO forces, the United Nations, and the United States Government. The firm has just released the newest version of the Airborne Missile Protection System that will be used on the multi-purpose MI-8 Helicopters for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

NASA being in the frontier of astrophysics is always working on developing better ways to discover the history of our galaxy and the universe. The next project NASA is working on is going to be the Mars 2020 rover, it’s going to be a more developed and better engineered rover and expected to launch in 2021. The rover will be designed to investigate the environment on Mars and possibly collect Martian soil and rocks that may show evidence for an ancient life on Mars. More importantly; this mission is going to mark the first of many missions to Mars because the scientists are looking to find ways to bring soil and rocks back to earth. The Mars 2020 rover is going to mark a significant milestone in NASA’s journey to discovering the cosmos.

From the skies of New Zealand, NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) has successfully launched a super pressure balloon (SPB) to investigate the balloon’s enhanced technology on enduring long flights which could last over 100 days. This was also an opportunity to complement the SPB with a sophisticated telescope such as The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) to explore the origins of galactic positrons, examine the galaxy’s nucleosynthesis, and measuring polarization from Gamma ray eruptions and black holes. This launch is the second attempt of equipping the SPB along with The Compton Spectrometer and Imager for a multi-purposed exploratory mission.

NASA has reached another milestone with the successful two-minute test launch of its biggest rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), bringing the space agency one step closer to Mars.