Recent Updates

NASA has marked April 8 as the first possible flight date for its Mars helicopter technology demonstrator, which arrived on the planet on Feb. 18 attached to the Perseverance rover. Named Ingenuity, the demonstrator is designed to be the first powered, controlled aircraft to fly on another planet. Once it detaches from the rover, the […]

NASA successfully completed the second hot fire test of the core stage of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Thursday at Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The rocket’s four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines fired for 8 minutes and 19 seconds while running through a series of operational conditions designed to simulate […]

China-based autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) company EHang has announced plans to build an “eco-sustainable” vertiport in Italy. The company says the vertiport, which is being designed to support its EH216 passenger AAV, will be capable of generating over 300 kW of electricity a day via solar panels. In addition to a landing platform with “plug-and-play” […]

One of the most common places Experimental airplane owners look for performance improvements is the propeller, and many homebuilts go through several props in their lifetime. This is not surprising as propeller design, like many aspects of aircraft design, is an exercise in tradeoffs, but prop design in particular is a black art to many. There […]

The FAA has announced that the final rules covering remote identification of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drones) and drone operations over people will now go into effect on April 21, 2021. The original effective date for both rules was March 16, 60 days after they were published in the Federal Register. According to the FAA, the […]

The pandemic-paused pilot shortage will be felt again by 2023 and back with a vengeance by 2025, according to a new study on the pilot supply. The report, by the consulting firm of Oliver Wyman, says the aviation industry could be short as many as 50,000 pilots worldwide by the middle of the decade after […]

Urban air mobility (UAM) company Volocopter announced on Wednesday that it has raised €200 million ($238 million) in its Series D funding round. According to the company, the funding will be used to certify its VoloCity electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) air taxi and accelerate the launch of its first commercial routes. The latest […]

The FAA has chosen five host airports to test technologies designed to “detect and mitigate potential safety risks” presented by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drones). The airports selected are New Jersey’s Atlantic City International Airport (ACY); Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) in New York; Rickenbacker International Airport (LCK) in Columbus, Ohio; Huntsville International Airport (HSV) in […]

All-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Kitty Hawk and international health care company Falck have announced that they will be collaborating on adapting Kitty Hawk’s Heaviside eVTOL for emergency response operations. According to the companies, the partnership’s first priority will be developing a framework for integrating Heaviside into emergency services. Falck intends to […]

Joby Aviation has released the first in-flight video of its tiltrotor eVTOL after taking the somewhat secretive startup public in a deal worth $1.6 billion. The born-in-a-barn aircraft is shown going through basic flight maneuvers in the video. It appears to be unmanned and flown by remote control. It has five seats and Joby says […]