NASA

NASA announced Wednesday that its Ingenuity Mars helicopter reached a total flight time of 30 minutes during its 17th flight on Dec. 5. The 117-second trip brought the total time in the air logged by the rotorcraft to 30 minutes and 48 seconds. As previously reported by AVweb, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to operate […]

NASA has chosen ten candidates for its 2021 astronaut class, the agency announced on Monday during an event at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. Selected from among more than 12,000 applicants, the candidates are the agency’s first new astronaut class in four years. They are scheduled to report to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to begin […]

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a contract to build boosters for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Booster Production and Operations Contract (BPOC), which is valued at $3.19 billion, will support nine SLS flights through Dec. 31, 2031. Along with support for NASA’s first three Artemis missions, for which Northrop Grumman has already produced […]

NASA and Lockheed Martin have removed the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) research aircraft from its jig system and are moving toward final assembly, according to a recent announcement from NASA. Part of the agency’s low-boom flight demonstration mission, the goal of the X-59 QueSST design is to reduce “the loudness of a sonic boom […]

NASA is pushing its plans for a crewed mission to the Moon back until at least 2025, the agency announced in an update on its Artemis program on Tuesday. Originally aiming to land “the first woman and next man” on the Moon in 2024, the Artemis team still needs to complete a planned uncrewed mission […]

NASA has chosen Pratt & Whitney to develop advanced high pressure turbine technologies for single-aisle commercial transport aircraft as part of the agency’s Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC) project. HyTEC, which is part of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership, is looking to “enable breakthrough innovations and help accomplish the aviation industry’s … goals to significantly […]

NASA and Boeing have announced that the next launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been pushed back to next year while the company works to correct an oxidizer isolation valve issue on the vehicle’s service module propulsion system. The problem was discovered last August when unexpected valve position indications caused the cancellation of an uncrewed […]

NASA has reassigned astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada from missions aboard Boeing’s Starliner to the SpaceX Crew-5 launch. Mann was previously assigned to NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test while Cassada was scheduled for the Starliner-1 mission. NASA noted that the change was made “to allow Boeing time to complete the development of Starliner while […]

The FAA and NASA have wrapped up research and testing on software designed to minimize taxi delays and ease ramp congestion along with saving fuel and reducing carbon emissions. The new NASA-developed software capability, which is designed to calculate gate pushbacks to allow aircraft to “roll directly to the runway and to take off,” will […]

The NASA Advanced Air Mobility National (AAM) Campaign team has wrapped up two weeks of flight testing on Joby Aviation’s prototype electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The tests, which were the first to be conducted by NASA using an eVTOL aircraft as part of the campaign, took place at Joby’s facility near Big […]