Space
Airbus qualifies Europe's first 5-meter deployable reflector for radar satellites
The unfurlable, parabolic, composite reflector offers significant advantages in satellite deployment and marks Airbus’s entry into the market for cost-effective and small radar missions and constellations.
Read More
HX5 thermoplastic nanocomposite demonstrates electromagnetic shielding properties
Certified for use from rockets and satellites to amphibious transport vehicles, EMI testing indicates exceptional attenuation when bare or plated for shielding effectiveness.
Read More
Environmental testing completed for NASA James Webb telescope
Successful acoustic and sine-vibration testing ensures the composites-intensive space telescope will survive all of the harsh conditions associated with a rocket launch to space.
Watch
NASA looks to advance 3D printing construction systems for the Moon and Mars
Off-world construction is taken to a new level with NASA’s MMPACT project, which will test lunar soil simulant with various processing and printing technologies to determine 3D printing feasibility in space.
Read More
Airbus concludes Zephyr HAPS flight test campaign
The composites-intensive Zephyr HAPS satellite is a stratospheric unmanned aerial system, which, with this recently successful flight test, is one step closer to providing local satellite-like services.
Read More
Successful integration of PocketQube satellites in 3D-printed composite deployer
The 3D-printed, composites-based AlbaPod v2 satellite deployer and nine integrated PocketQubes for the Alba Cluster 3 mission enable largest PocketQube launch to date.
Read More
Firefly Aerospace to automate composite rocket production with Ingersoll AFP machine
The company plans to transition manufacture of its Alpha and Beta all-composite launch vehicles to automated fiber placement starting in 2021.
Read More
Episode 34: Carmelo Lo Faro, Solvay Composite Materials
Carmelo Lo Faro, president of Solvay Composite Materials, talks about how he sees aerocomposites evolving in the time of COVID-19, the rise of computational power to evolve composites use, the prospects for increased composites use in the automotive market, and the increasing importance of education in the composites industry.
Listen
Firefly Aerospace announces new customer agreements, completed acceptance tests
One step closer to launch, the Alpha launch vehicle passed Stage One acceptance testing. Spire Global and Geometric Space signed on as Alpha customers.
Read More
The Alpha launch vehicle: Designing performance in, cost out
Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha 2.0 launch vehicle, designed to deliver satellites into low Earth orbit, gets a composites makeover in pursuit of larger payload capacity and more cost-effective performance.
Read More