Aerospace & Defence

  At NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the sounding rocket team conducted a mission that launched on 16th September 2015. Including the firing of 44 rocket engines, this mission set a world record for the most rocket engines fired on a single flight.

In partnership with Space Center Houston, the Official Visitor Center of NASA Johnson Space Center, and NineSigma, a global innovation consultant organisation, has opened registration for a new competition. The Space Robotics Challenge seeks to develop the capabilities of humanoid robots to help astronauts on the journey to Mars.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has set-up the Innovation and Research Insights Unit (or IRIS for short), to potentially plough up to £800m over the next ten years into emerging defence technologies.

The miniature satellites known as CubeSats already play a variety of roles in space. In future they could also serve as the building blocks of other, larger missions by being docked together in orbit. CubeSats are nanosatellites of standardised dimensions based on multiple 10cm sided cubes, which ESA is employing for both educational and technology-demonstration purposes.

NASA is preparing to launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring a sample back to Earth for inten...

A 3D sky-mapping project that will measure the light of millions of galaxies has received formal approval from the U.S. Department of Energy to move forward with construction. Installation of the project, called DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument), is set to begin next year at the Nicholas U. Mayall 4m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., with observations starting up in January 2019.

Following the completion of all indoor testing, the Airlander 10, the world’s largest aircraft, has successfully exited the hangar for the first time. Airlander 10, a plane/airship hybrid, is designed to stay airborne for up to five days at a time to fulfil a wide range of communication and survey roles, as well as cargo carrying and tourist passenger flights.

It has been announced that Renishaw is contributing its additive manufacturing expertise to a £17.7m project, being led by Airbus in the UK, to develop an innovative way of designing and manufacturing aircraft wings, which will encourage a 'right first time approach' and reduce development time. 

Following a key programme review, NASA approved the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) to proceed to the next phase of design and development for the mission's robotic segment. ARM is a two-part mission that will integrate robotic and crewed spacecraft operations in the proving ground of deep space to demonstrate key capabilities needed for NASA's journey to Mars.

In 2020, NASA plans to launch a new Mars rover that will be tasked with probing a region of the planet scientists believe could hold remnants of ancient microbial life. The rover will collect samples of rocks and soil, and store them on the Martian surface; the samples would be returned to Earth sometime in the distant future so that scientists can meticulously analyse the samples for signs of present or former extraterrestrial life.