NASA coined this term in early 2020 to encompass the automated (or optionally piloted) electric aircraft that would move “people and cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation — local, regional, intraregional, urban,” as NASA’s AAM website puts it. AAM includes urban and regional air mobility designs, and often refers to electric vertical takeoff and landing concepts.
This latest iteration of the expendable Ariane rocket design was first launched in 1996 by Arianespace, the France-based company established in 1980 to launch and market rockets developed with European Space Agency funding. Ariane 5s have sent 269 spacecraft to orbit, but during that inaugural flight from Kourou, French Guiana, the onboard autonomous navigation software failed, and the rocket veered off course and exploded. One of the final Ariane 5 flights was the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 25, 2021, after which ESA plans to phase out the Ariane 5 and shift to the in-development Ariane 6. That design’s inaugural flight is scheduled for mid-2022.
In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence announced during a National Space Council meeting that NASA would land “the first woman and the next man on the moon” by 2024. Then, in May, NASA announced the program’s name as Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology. NASA plans to send astronauts about once per year to construct an Artemis Base Camp. The NASA Office of Inspector General in November 2021 placed the Artemis cost at $93 billion through fiscal 2025. The Biden administration in early 2021 voiced support for Artemis, but that November NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said agency would target a 2025 landing because, among other reasons, the Trump administration’s 2024 was “was not rooted in technical feasibility.” The Artemis I flight in which a Space Launch System rocket boosted an unoccupied Orion capsule began in November 2022 and concluded in early December. An Artemis II lunar flyby with four astronauts is targeted for late 2024.
NASA, in May 2020, published a set of principles on its website challenging the nations of the world to maintain peace “on and around the moon” by abiding by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and committing to explore for “peaceful purposes” only. Signatories to the Artemis Accords, named for NASA’s Artemis lunar program, pledge to register all “space objects,” extract resources only in compliance with the 1967 treaty, avoid “harmful interference” with each other, and meet a host of other principles. Twenty-one countries have signed onto the Artemis Accords.
This standards body headquartered in Pennsylvania crafts the technical standards for wide-ranging applications, including aircraft components and synthetic jet fuels. Established by a group of Pennsylvania Railroad engineers and scientists in 1898 as the American Society for Testing and Materials, ASTM originally focused on analyzing and issuing specifications for railroad materials but has gradually grown to include industries including aerospace. In the ensuing decades, the organization expanded its membership beyond the United States prompting the 2001 name change to ASTM International.
The latest variant of the expendable Atlas rockets, originally designed as Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that would launch U.S. warheads. Lockheed Martin developed the Atlas V design, the first vehicle of which flew in 2002, with funds from the U.S. Air Force under its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program of the 1990s and early 2000s. United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is developing a replacement launch vehicle, the Vulcan Centaur, partly because a 2014 U.S. law prohibits launching defense and intelligence satellites after Dec. 31, 2022, via the Russian-made RD-180 engines, meaning those that power each Atlas first stage.
Airlines resumed flying these single-aisle jets in November 2020 after two crashes prompted aviation authorities around the world to ground the planes in March 2019. In the 2018 Lion Air and 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the anti-stall software unique to the MAX, called MCAS, short for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, forced the noses of the planes down repeatedly in response to readings from faulty sensors that indicated the planes were approaching a stall. FAA conducted a 20-month safety review that concluded in November 2020, at which time Boeing and airlines around the world were cleared to update the planes’ flight software and ready them for flight. In the U.S., American Airlines was the first to resume MAX flights in December.
The first two NASA-contracted CLPS launches to the moon are scheduled for 2023, when Astrobotic’s Peregrine robotic lander rides atop a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket, and when two Nova-C robotic landers from Intuitive Machines goes up on separate SpaceX Falcon 9s. This delay of the original 2021 launch dates was prompted in part by the covid-19 pandemic, both companies said. NASA established the CLPS program in 2018 to pay private companies to send equipment and rovers to the lunar surface ahead of the first Artemis astronaut landing. NASA has so far approved 14 vendors, meaning companies who are eligible for CLPS awards and has awarded eight contracts. These leave it up to the awardee to choose the launch provider.
NASA launched this 6-wheeled rover in 2011 for the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which aims to determine whether Mars was once capable of supporting microbial life. Curiosity’s August 2012 landing on Mars was the first to utilize the sky crane maneuver, in which the 899-kilogram rover was lowered on a tether to the surface. The rover is currently exploring Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer-tall mountain in the Gale Crater. Curiosity travels an average of 30 meters per day, scooping up and drilling into rocks for its onboard instruments to analyze. The instruments have detected traces of sulfur, carbon and other organic compounds.
SpaceX’s fleet of reusable spacecraft, consisting of cargo and crew variants that ferry astronauts and supplies to International Space Station and back for NASA. An earlier version of the Cargo Dragon design was grappled by the ISS robotic arm, but both Dragon 2 variants dock directly to the station. In late 2020, NASA certified the Dragon design for contracted crewed flights, following the two-person test flight dubbed Demo-2 earlier that year. The first of those contracted flights occurred in November 2020 when a Dragon 2 carried four astronauts to ISS as the first of six crewed flights under a 2014 contract. NASA in early 2022 amended the contract to include three more flights and awarded SpaceX an additional $766 million. SpaceX also plans to book customers outside NASA, and has conducted two private flights: the Inspiration 4 launch of four tourists in September 2021 for a five-day orbital trip, and an eight-day stay at ISS for one Axiom astronaut and three private citizens in April 2022 dubbed Ax-1.
A cargo version of this lifting-body spaceplane design from Sierra Nevada Corp. is under construction and scheduled for a first flight in 2023 atop a ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket with supplies for the International Space Station. This particular spaceplane, dubbed Tenacity, and all future Dream Chasers, will glide back and land on a runway like the space shuttle. Between 2013 and 2017, SNC completed a series of drop tests to demonstrate this landing technique, dropping the Dream Chaser Engineering Test Article from an altitude of 12,000 feet multiple times. Long term, SNC plans to build a crew version of Dream Chaser that would hold 7 passengers once the cargo variant begins operations.
The first spacecraft of this joint European-Russian ExoMars mission, the Trace Gas Orbiter, has been circling Mars since 2017 to act as a communications relay for the mission’s other spacecraft: 1. the Airbus-built Rosalind Franklin rover, funded by the European Space Agency and named after the English chemist of DNA fame, and 2. The Russian-built Kazachok or “little Cossack” platform from which the rover will roll. Both are scheduled for launch aboard a Proton in 2022, four years late. The two supersonic parachutes that must slow the assembly during descent ripped during 2019 tests in Sweden.
This office licenses private sector space launches and reentries and is known in the industry by its lettered designation within the Department of Transportation. The A denotes “aviation,” meaning the office is within FAA, and ST stands for “space transportation.” Established in 1984 under the Office of the Secretary in the Transportation Department, AST was moved under FAA in 1995. Congress in 2004 gave AST the additional authority to regulate the design of privately developed rockets and spacecraft to ensure passenger safety, but not until the expiration of a “learning period” meant to give the nascent industry time to grow without regulatory burden, although this moratorium would be lifted in the event of a passenger fatality or serious injury. The regulatory moratorium was set at eight years but has been extended repeatedly and is currently due to expire Oct. 1, 2023.
As of August, SpaceX has flown a variant of the Falcon 9 rocket design 172 times including the inaugural flight carrying a test version of the company’s Dragon capsule in 2010. As of June, SpaceX had reflown an individual Falcon 9 booster 13 times, three launches beyond what was previously thought to be the limit of the Falcon 9 design. SpaceX is now pushing the limits of the booster design, recovering first stages via vertical touchdowns aboard drone ships, and less frequently at its Cape Canaveral launch pad, facilitated by retrorockets and retractable landing legs. SpaceX first reflew a Falcon 9 booster in 2017. In April 2021 NASA cleared a previously flown booster for the launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station for the Crew-2 mission.
In a departure from the NASA-owned lunar landers of the Apollo era, NASA’s Artemis program plans to pay for astronauts to ride in corporate-owned landers from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface. NASA in April 2021 awarded a single $2.89 billion contract to SpaceX to conduct an uncrewed and crewed mission by 2024, prompting the other competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics to file protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office and Blue to later sue NASA in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, pausing NASA work on the lander for seven months. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in November, but NASA says the 2024 date is now out of reach. The agency had awarded a combined $967 million to Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX in 2020 to refine their lander concepts, the plan being to select at least two lander designs for additional funding in a model similar to the Commercial Crew program. But NASA said Congress did not appropriate enough funds in fiscal 2021 for the agency to award two contracts for the 2024 mission, so the agency plans to solicit additional lander designs in future competitions. NASA has estimated that the HLS program will cost $16 billion between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025.
NASA’s $9.7 billion mission to peer back in time to the era 150 million to 200 million years after the Big Bang. Scientists expect to see the formation of hot gases into stars, planets and galaxies. Conceived in 1996, Webb was originally scheduled to be launched between 2007 and 2011, but NASA and prime contractor Northrop Grumman experienced a series of delays and cost overruns mainly related to the sunshield and valves that would pump propellant to the spacecraft’s thrusters. Webb was launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket on Dec. 25, 2021, beginning a 29-day journey to an orbit around the second Lagrange point, a location beyond Earth relative to the sun. Once unfolded, its 6.5-meter primary mirror began collecting infrared light from these early features. Plans call for a five-year mission, but NASA says there’s enough fuel to point the spacecraft and maintain its orbit for at least 10 years.
NASA’s program to gather acoustic and community response data that could help the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization craft a global noise standard for aircraft flying faster than Mach 1. In the United States, overland supersonic flights have been banned since 1973 for fear that sonic booms would be a nuisance to residents. NASA plans to fly the X-59 demonstrator, now under construction, over populated areas starting in 2024 and survey residents to gather their reactions. NASA and Lockheed Martin designed the X-59 to reduce the sonic boom to a “thump” about as loud as closing a car door.
This was the original name of the expendable spacecraft built by Grumman Aerospace (now part of Northrop Grumman) for NASA’s Apollo program for the lunar landings. Each consisted of a single-engine descent stage to propel the two astronauts in the crew compartment to the surface, and an ascent stage to return them to lunar orbit for docking with a command module. NASA later simplified the name to Lunar Module, believing that “excursion” didn’t convey the difficulty of moon landings, but many continued to refer to each module as the “lem” due to the original LEM acronym. In 1970, the Apollo 13 crew famously turned their Aquarius Lunar Module into a lifeboat after an exploding oxygen tank knocked out power in the Odyssey command module.
This software on Boeing 737 MAX jets, in its original form, forced the nose down if readings from one angle-of-attack sensor indicated danger of aerodynamic stall. During the MAX crashes, MCAS pushed the nose of the planes down repeatedly as the crews struggled. After the first crash, FAA ordered Boeing to modify MCAS to only activate when it receives matching readings from both AoA sensors, and to only activate once. After the second crash, additional steps included more pilot training and new checklists pertaining to MCAS, which wasn’t referenced in pilot manuals prior to the 2018 and 2019 MAX crashes.
The illusion of complete or partial weightlessness during free fall toward Earth. The term can be misleading. Consider the International Space Station. While gravity’s strength decreases with distance, at the altitude of ISS gravity aboard is still 90% as strong as at Earth’s surface. Because the station and everything inside it are in free fall, objects float and feel weightless, but they stay aloft by circling Earth fast enough that they continually fall beyond Earth’s curve. The sensation of reduced or zero gravity can also be created by flying an aircraft in a parabola pattern, with the maneuvers tailored to achieve specific G forces.
Blue Origin’s reusable booster-and-capsule design sent its first passengers, which included founder Jeff Bezos, to the fringes of space and back on July 20, 2021, in a flight from West Texas. Blue has so far launched four New Shepard boosters on a total of 17 flights with unoccupied capsules since 2015, and a total of six passenger flights since 2021. During each flight, the capsule separates from the booster, which then heads back and lands vertically via retrorockets, while the capsule proceeds to space and returns for a landing under parachutes. Two New Shepard rockets currently fly — New Shepard 3 for cargo flights and New Shepard 4 exclusively for passenger flights. The 11-minute autonomous rides can send up to six passengers to a maximum altitude of about 100 kilometers for three minutes of weightlessness and panoramic views of Earth through six rounded rectangular windows. With a combined surface area of 4.2 square meters, the windows comprise one-third of the capsule’s surface area.
Short for Next Generation Air Transportation System, this upgrade of aircraft surveillance equipment and air traffic control facilities is a multi-year modernization initiative the FAA will be working on through at least 2025. Most recently, all general aviation aircraft in the U.S. were required to be equipped with ADS-B Out transponders that broadcast their identity and location to Iridium satellites, other aircraft and air traffic control stations.
The FAA’s program created in 2005 to streamline certification by delegating authority to employees at companies to sign off on certain aspects of an aircraft’s design. In the wake of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes, FAA has been criticized for using ODA to “self-certify,” a term the agency says mischaracterizes the ODA program. In September 2020, the U.S. House of representatives introduced legislation requiring FAA to have more direct oversight over companies completing work under ODAs. In December 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed the “Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act” into law.
NASA in 2006 awarded Lockheed Martin a $3.9 billion contract to build this line of partially reusable capsules for ferrying astronauts to orbits around the moon and someday Mars. With 2½ times the volume of the Apollo command modules, Orion capsules can carry four astronauts for up to six months. NASA calls them “multi-purpose crew vehicles” because they could deliver cargo or rescue stranded astronauts on the International Space Station. When the Obama administration canceled the Constellation program that included Orion and the proposed Ares rockets, it struck a deal with Congress to continue developing Orions for launch on the Ares replacement, the expendable Space Launch System rockets. The first SLS launched an unoccupied Orion around the moon in November 2022 under the Artemis program. NASA estimates the Orion program will cost $9.3 billion through a subsequent crewed lunar flyby scheduled for 2024.
For this line of next-generation expendable rockets, NASA originally estimated it would need $10 billion to cover the design and construction leading to an unoccupied test flight in 2017. The agency has now spent $19.6 billion on the SLS program and is targeting late 2022 for that first flight, after scrubbing the Aug. 29 and Sept. 3 launch attempts. Born out of a congressional mandate in the 2010 NASA authorization, the initial SLS design, called Block 1, would loft between 70 and 100 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. The Boeing-built SLS core stage carries a liquid hydrogen tank and a liquid oxygen tank to deliver propellant to four Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines that previously flew on multiple space shuttle missions. NASA plans to conduct the first three missions of the Artemis moon program aboard SLS Block 1s, then switch to an in-development SLS variant, Block 1B, which could loft 105 metric tons with its more powerful upper stage.
Refers to the knowledge such as the identities and orbits of satellites that companies and authorities must have in order to avert collisions between satellites or with debris. The U.S. maintains its SSA at the interagency National Space Defense Center at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado, based in part on tracking and identification information from the U.S. Space Force 18th Space Control Squadron at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Trump administration in 2018 directed the Department of Commerce to assume SSA monitoring and collision warnings for nonmilitary spacecraft, but Congress has yet to approve the necessary funding.
Boeing is building two of these seven-passenger capsules to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and back for NASA under a $4.2 billion contract awarded in 2014. The first of six contracted flights is tentatively scheduled for 2023, six years behind the original date. A series of coding errors cut short the 2019 uncrewed flight of a Starliner to ISS, and a second attempt in August 2021 with a different capsule was called off hours before launch when technicians discovered 13 of the 24 valves that would pump nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer to the thrusters in the capsule’s service module would not open. NASA and Boeing later said the valves had corroded when oxidizer leaking through the valves mingled with moisture in the air at the Florida launch site. Boeing later repaired the valves and conducted a six-day uncrewed test flight in May 2022. Another test flight with two astronauts is tentatively scheduled for February 2023.
SpaceX’s $10 billion venture to build a 42,000-satellite constellation that will provide broadband internet to consumers from altitudes between 540 kilometers and 570 kilometers, thus avoiding the signal latency of today’s satellite internet providers in geosynchronous orbits 35,000 km over the equator. SpaceX has been cleared by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch the first 12,000 satellites, and is awaiting approval for the additional 30,000 spacecraft. Twice monthly launches of 60 satellites began in 2019 on Falcon 9 rockets. During launch, the flat, rectangular spacecraft built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, are stacked like tabletops inside the rocket’s nosecone. Each satellite has a single solar panel that must unfurl like a paper map after deployment. SpaceX has about 3,500 satellites on orbit and in October 2020 began beta tests with Starlink.
This is SpaceX’s shorthand name for the combination of a reusable Super Heavy booster with a reusable Starship spacecraft on top of it. In April 2023, a Starship-Super Heavy combo became the most powerful rocket ever to lift off, before exploding about four minutes into the flight due to the failure of some of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines. In some contexts, “Starship” refers specifically to the spacecraft that could carry up to 100 people to the moon and Mars, and carry passengers from point to point on Earth in less than an hour, in founder Elon Musk’s vision. The first use of a Starship spacecraft could be to deliver NASA astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface in the planned Artemis III mission, now “probably” slipping to 2026, under a $2.9 billion contract with NASA. SpaceX also has a $1.5 billion contract for the Artemis IV lander. All Starships are built in SpaceX’s Starbase complex in Boca Chica, Texas.
This is the SpaceX booster that will serve as the first stage of each Starship-Super Heavy rocket. Each Super Heavy will be powered by 33 Raptor engines burning liquid methane with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. After accelerating a Starship to a speed of about 2,100 kilometers per hour, Super Heavy will release it. In reusable mode, a Super Heavy would return to the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, to be grasped by two long arms — referred to as “chopsticks” by Elon Musk — that are part of the Mechazilla launch tower. A Starship-Super Heavy could carry up to 150 metric tons to orbit in this mode, compared to 250 metric tons in an expendable mode.
The ASTM International standards body has certified five conversion processes for these jet fuels — also called alternative fuels, synthetic fuels and synthetic kerosene — derived from feedstocks ranging from used cooking oil to agricultural residue to be blended in a 50/50 ratio with conventional kerosene jet fuel, another two to be blended in 10/90 ratios and two in a 5/95 ratio. Jet engines burning SAFs emit about the same amount of carbon dioxide as when they burn conventional fossil fuels, but the net increase in atmospheric carbon is minimal: In the case of crop residue, those plants absorb CO2 as they grow, which offsets the amount of CO2 expelled when that plant is converted into SAF and burned for combustion by a jet engine. This is referred to as the lifecycle emissions.
This is the second SpaceShipTwo piloted spaceplane built for Virgin Galactic by Scaled Composites. It has been to the fringes of space and back four times, surpassing the 80-kilometer boundary the U.S. Air Force considers the edge of space in 2018, 2019 and twice in 2021. That includes the July 11 flight by Richard Branson, three passengers and two pilots. Each flight begins with the piloted WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, climbing to about 50,000 feet and releasing Unity. After a few moments, Unity’s rocket motor fires to boost it to altitudes of about 80 kilometers (50 miles), providing passengers with several minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth through 12 circular windows before pilots begin a descent and landing back at Virgin’s hub at the state of New Mexico’s Spaceport America.
United Launch Alliance’s eventual replacement for its Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets is now scheduled to make its debut launch in 2022, due to delays with the Peregrine moon lander in development by Astrobotic, a lunar logistics company in Pittsburgh. ULA must complete that flight and a launch of Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser spaceplane, scheduled for early 2023, before the United States will consider launching billion-dollar spy and military satellites under Phase 2 of the National Security Space Launch program. The deadline is tightening for ULA, because a 2014 law prohibits government launches after 2022 with the Russian-made RD-180 engine that powers the Atlas V upper stage. The Vulcan Centaur first stage will be powered by two BE-4 engines from Blue Origin of Washington state. Up to six solid rocket boosters can be attached to a Vulcan Centaur single-core booster for additional thrust.
