Hawaiian Airlines officially gets SpaceX Starlink high-speed in-flight WiFi on select A321neo aircraft. Passengers will be able to connect to WiFi as soon as they step on board, without registration pages or payment portals.
The Airbus Detumbler is an innovative device specially designed to prevent decommissioned satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) from tumbling. It was launched on November 11 and will be tested in space on the Exotrail and EnduroSat mission during early 2024. This magnetic damping device can be securely attached to just about any satellite.
The Airbus VSR700 Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) has successfully completed a sea trial after performing 80 fully autonomous takeoff and landing procedures from a civil vessel equipped with a helicopter deck. Its autonomous takeoff and landing capabilities are made possible with the Airbus DeckFinder system, which boasts an accuracy of 10-20cm during challenging operations in harsh environmental conditions, regardless of degraded visual conditions.
NASA plans to operate the International Space Station (ISS) through 2030, and when the time comes, the Airbus LOOP orbital module will be ready. It can become a part of any post-ISS infrastructure, whether it be commercial or institutional, as LOOP was designed to fit with the upcoming generation of super-heavy launchers that can launch an entire module in one piece.
Hi Fly, a company that leases widebody aircraft, has made history by successfully landing the first ever Airbus A340 in Antarctica. Captain Carlos Mirpuri flew his crew from Cape Town to Antarctica and back, a journey that totaled 2,500 nautical miles, or just over five hours each way. The aircraft, officially called the Hi Fly 9H-SOL A340-313HGW (High Gross Weight, has a maximum take-off weight of 275 tons.
Revealed at the 2021 Dubai Airshow, the Explorer by Lufthansa Technik Design is essentially a new wide-body VIP cabin concept that can be considered a luxury superyacht for the sky. It’s fitted on an Airbus A330 since it has a classic wide-body design, complete with sufficient space for a large number of novel cabin ideas as well as the long range required to fulfill the special wishes of the target group.
Airbus officially unveiled its next-generation CityAirbus eVTOL aircraft at the company’s first summit on “Pioneering Sustainable Aerospace” in Toulouse, France. This fully electric aircraft comes equipped with fixed wings, a V-shaped tail, and eight electrically powered propellers, which are a part of its uniquely designed distributed propulsion system. The CityAirbus will be able to comfortably transport up to four passengers in a zero emissions flight in multiple applications.
First unveiled last year, the Airbus MAVERIC Model Aircraft for Validation and Experimentation of Robust Innovative Controls) boasts a blended wing design that could potentially reduce fuel consumption by up to 20% compared to current single-aisle aircraft. It’s powered by hydrogen, which can be combusted directly through modified gas turbines using a process that converts it into electric energy with fuel cells. When hydrogen is combined with CO2, it can be used to produce synthetic kerosene.
ESA’s European Robotic Arm (ERA) has been loaded onto the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) by Airbus space engineers and it’s now ready for its flight to the International Space Station (ISS). It will take one-week to reach the ISS, where it will service the Russian segment of the space station. Measuring 11.3 meters long, the symmetrical, two-handed intelligent robot arm can ‘walk’ around the exterior of the ISS, hand-over-hand from one fixed base-point to another.