Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

By Graham Warwick
Urban air mobility startup Archer is to go public in a deal that will raise up to $1.1 billion to fund commercialization of the company’s all-electric air taxi.
Advanced Air Mobility

By Irene Klotz
NASA on Feb. 9 awarded SpaceX a $331 million contract for Falcon Heavy launch and support services to send the first two modules of its planned Gateway outpost toward lunar orbit.
Space

By Irene Klotz, Maxim Pyadushkin
With one of its two U.S. commercial space taxi lines not yet operational, NASA is considering bartering for an extra seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule slated to launch in April or May to the International Space Station (ISS), the agency said Feb. 9.
Space

By Michael Bruno
Vertical Aerospace has tapped aerospace composites provider Solvay to supply the VA-1X electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi program.
Advanced Air Mobility

By Bill Carey
Spatial disorientation of the pilot led to the fatal crash of a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter in hilly terrain northwest of Los Angeles in January 2020 that killed basketball legend Kobe Bryant and eight others, the NTSB has found.
Safety, Ops & Regulation

By Lee Hudson
The U.S. Navy is adding 16 refurbished Harpoon Block IC missiles to its inventory to expand the anti-ship missile capacity of its Los Angeles-class submarine fleet.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Irene Klotz
Telesat has awarded a $3 billion contact to Thales Alenia Space to build its planned 298-member low Earth orbit broadband constellation, named Lightspeed.
Commercial Space

By Tony Osborne
Turkey will send a probe to make a hard landing on the Moon in 2023 as part of celebrations of the country’s centenary, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared.
Space

By Lee Hudson
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is asking the Pentagon to launch a formal investigation into four fatal UH-60 crashes to determine whether there is a systemic problem with the helicopter.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Steve Trimble
Northrop will engage in an analysis of alternatives for the Advanced Air Refueling program by Air Mobility Command, which is scheduled to begin in 2022.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Irene Klotz
The Emirates Mars Mission Hope spacecraft completed a 27-min. braking burn to put itself into orbit on Feb. 9, earning the United Arab Emirates a place in history as the first Arab nation to successfully reach the red planet.
Space

By Graham Warwick
British Airways is to invest in a sustainable aviation fuel plant to be built in the U.S. and anticipates receiving 7,500 metric tonnes a year of low-carbon jet fuel from the facility beginning at the end of 2022.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Michael Bruno
Cubic, a military training and C4ISR services specialist, will be taken private in a $2.8 billion takeover by Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management.
Sensors & Electronic Warfare

By Steve Trimble
The FAA has approved the first Re-entry Site Operator License for the Launch and Landing Facility in Titusville Florida, clearing the way for future
Space

By Mark Carreau
Russia’s MS-15 cargo capsule, filled with trash and discarded equipment, departed the International Space Station (ISS) early Feb. 9 for a destructive re-entry into the South Pacific Ocean.
Space

By Graham Warwick
Two projects have been announced in the Netherlands with the goal of producing carbon-neutral synthetic jet fuel using renewable energy.
Airports & Networks

By Guy Norris
NASA is transitioning long-running hypersonic technology studies increasingly toward potential commercial applications and has awarded two new contracts supporting high speed design and propulsion work to Aerion Supersonic and GE Aviation respectively.
Aircraft & Propulsion

By Jen DiMascio
Swarm, a low-cost satellite communications network company selling data from space for less than the cost of a Netflix subscription, is now available for commercial use.
Commercial Space

By Michael Bruno
British flat-panel satellite antenna systems maker Isotropic Systems, already a recipient of Boeing and venture capital funds, has landed at least $40 million more and plans to double in size as it races toward commercial rollout.
Space

By Lee Hudson
The U.S. is freezing the sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia as part of a broader Biden administration policy shift of not supporting the nation’s war in Yemen.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Jen DiMascio
General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman won contracts to pursue preliminary design work for DARPA’s LongShot program to develop an air-launched UAV that can employ multiple air-to-air weapons, DARPA announced Feb. 8.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Irene Klotz
The first of a trio of new spacecraft headed to Mars is nearing a do-or-die 27-min. engine burn on Feb. 9 to trim speed so it can be swept into orbit around the red planet.
Space

By Lee Hudson
Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has announced that he will not seek a seventh term in 2022.
Budget, Policy & Operations

By Tony Osborne
An independent report has concluded that neither Ukrainian nor Russian aviation regulators were aware of any potential threats to civil airspace in the lead up to the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.
Missile Defense & Weapons

By Graham Warwick
Large-scale flight demonstrations are planned in seven countries under a European program to expand its U-space concept of operations for unmanned traffic management to include urban air mobility.
Advanced Air Mobility