Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

Chinese space engineers observed the country’s largest orbital re-entry so far on April 2 when the Tiangong 1 space lab fell into the South Pacific Ocean.

The upgraded Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket SpaceX will make its first flight on a commercial mission for Bangladesh.

BOEING has $19.3m U.S. Navy contract to investigate/address events related to physiological episodes on the F/A-18A-F and EA-18G aircraft.

NASA astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold installed two wireless communications antennas and replaced a camera assembly during an abbreviated 6-hr. March 29 spacewalk.

View the Aviation Week Forecasts: Western Military Transport Deliveries/Retirements By Family 2018-2027 in PDF format.

SpaceX successfully deployed another batch of 10 of the communication company’s Next satellites into orbit on March 30.

India’s space agency has signed an agreement with the European Union to become part of a global data-sharing arrangement for Earth observation satellites.

The FCC has cleared SpaceX to operate a megaconstellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) to provide global, high-speed broadband services.

The U.S. government and Lockheed Martin must reduce F-35 costs or customers will have to make “tough decisions,” the U.S. Air Force Secretary says.

Stratospheric balloon startup World View Enterprises said March 29 it successfully closed a $26.5 million Series C round of financing.

Temporarily charging the exterior of an aircraft could significantly reduce the likelihood of a lightning strike, MIT researchers say.

The U.S. Navy is gearing up to declare its F-35C carrier variant ready for war in 2019.

Boeing is reorganizing the firm’s defense business in a move that could benefit its troubled KC-46 tanker.

Japan has reorganized its army to create a central command for the first time since World War II and to establish an amphibious brigade.

Turnaround specialist Melrose Industries succeeded in its hostile takeover of GKN.

The tiny Balkan country will purchase 12 F-16C/Ds from Israel that will undergo a life-extension program prior to delivery.

Lockheed Martin expects to deliver six F-35As to South Korea this year, out of 40 ordered.

The KLJ-7A radar, which features an AESA, will be supplied to Pakistan for the FC-1 fighter, says Hu Mingchun, head of the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology.

FRANCE kicked off 25-month, €2m ($2.5m) “Dominno” study to improve military helicopter engine maintenance through the use of “big data.”

Russia’s Soyuz MS-08 capsule docked with the International Space Station March 23, restoring the orbital lab to six-person operations.

Before there was “C2D2,” the Star Wars-evoking acronym for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 upgrade program, there was the F-22 Raptor’s “Scaled Agile Framework.”

Poland has signed agreements with the U.S. government to purchase the Raytheon Patriot ground-based air and missile defense system.

Turkey, short of aircraft pilots since removing many from their positions following a 2016 coup attempt, has asked South Korea to train more.

Darpa is developing ways for humans to work with large numbers of small autonomous air and ground vehicles to perform complex tasks.

Nontraditional defense prime contractor L3 Technologies on March 27 unveiled a five-year cloud computing deal with Microsoft.