NASA

NASA said last week it has officially committed to a development timeline that will lead to the first flight of its X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft by 2021. Development of X-59 QueSST falls under the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project, part of the Integrated Aviation Systems Program in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. The […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes millions of people across the planet will tune in to either NASA TV or the agency’s website on November 26 just before 2 p.m. EST and watch the scheduled landing of the MARS InSight on the surface of the red planet. The actual landing should occur about 3 […]

NASA’s remotely-piloted Ikhana aircraft on Tuesday successfully flew its first mission in the National Airspace System without a safety chase aircraft. The UAV departed from the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California and moved the United States one step closer to normalizing unmanned aircraft operations in the airspace used by commercial and private […]

NASA yesterday chose Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Skunk Works in Palmdale to build the next X-plane to serve as a low-sonic boom demonstrator test vehicle. The Skunk Works facility is where aircraft such as the famous Blackbird, the U-2 and the F-117 first took shape. The contract translates into $247.5 million for Lockheed to build the […]

Former Navy pilot John Young, the only NASA astronaut to fly in space as a crewmember aboard the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, died Friday following complications from pneumonia. He was also the first astronaut to fly in space on six different occasions. Young was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in […]

Professional drone racing pilot Ken ‘FlyingBear’ Loo is used to racing the likes of Paul ‘Nurk’ Nurkala, Nick ‘Wild Willy’ Willard and Jordan ‘Jet’ Temkin through extravagant tracks in cool locations, later to be aired on ESPN. Racing a NASA-built autonomous drone? Not so much. “We pitted our algorithms against a human, who flies a […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Richard “Dick” Gordon, the pilot on the 1969 Apollo 12 lunar mission, died on Monday. During that 31-hour lunar surface stay nearly 50 years ago, astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean proceeded to the moon’s surface while Gordon remained in orbit aboard Apollo 12’s command module, “Yankee Clipper.” […]

Ground transportation giant Uber has partnered with NASA through a Space Act Agreement to figure out how to safely introduce its concept of transporting urban travelers by air. UberAir plans to use light, VTOL vehicles to quickly whisk passengers from one location to another, bypassing the gridlock of traffic that has become the norm in […]

This month, a research program called SonicBAT II (short for Sonic Booms in Atmospheric Turbulence), is set to begin to help understand sonic booms and how to reduce the noise associated with supersonic flight. The program is a partnership between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Langley Research Center […]

A team of NASA-funded scientists, led by Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, will chase the moon’s shadow in two retrofitted Martin WB-57 high-altitude jets. For most everyone able to experience the eclipse it will last about two minutes, but for Caspi’s team it will last upwards of seven. “These […]