In Pictures: Top Aerospace & Defense Stories, Aug. 03 2022

Credit: NASA.

NASA has selected Axiom Space for a fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) targeted for launch no sooner than August 2024.

Credit: U.S. Navy.

The U.S. should study the design of a system for public reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) to minimize hoaxes and incidents of misidentified objects, the RAND Corp. think tank says in a newly published research paper entitled “Not the X-Files.”

Credit: Northrop Grumman.

U.S. Space Systems Command and Space Norway have completed a test of an important payload that will fly on an Extremely High Frequency communication satellite, showing the payload’s ability to survive the temperature fluctuations of space.

Credit: Boeing.

The U.S. Air Force will begin receiving technical data on the Boeing-Leonardo MH-139 helicopter beginning this fall as part of a protracted process to find an agreement on the sustainment data and intellectual property.

Northrop Grumman plans to increase the cargo capacity of its Cygnus cargo spacecraft from 3,750 kg to 5,000 kg (8,270-11,000 lb.).

Credit: Northrop Grumman.

Having claimed the U.S. Air Force’s first Mach 5-plus cruise missile program with partner Raytheon, Northrop Grumman on Aug. 3 opened a 60,000 ft.² factory dedicated to producing the ramjet, scramjet and other advanced propulsion systems needed for future hypersonic missiles. 

Credit: U.S. Air Force.

A Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie has been flown for the first time with a certain tactical problem solved during the flight by machine learning (ML)-trained algorithms developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).