Aerospace

Locata wants to fill holes in GPS location, navigation

It's a common affliction: you're using your smartphone to navigate in a city with a bunch of big buildings and your phone misplaces your location.

Often the problem often is that the GPS location system just doesn't work well where the satellite radio signals can be blocked or reflected. A company called Locata says it's got an answer.

Locata does what the GPS system does, but it replaces satellites in orbit with radio transmitters on the ground. The result is location services with high precision, better reliability, and indoor coverage, said Paul Benshoof, global business development … Read more

Secretive X-37B space plane ready for next flight

It's round three for the mysterious X-37B space plane.

An Atlas V rocket carrying the unmanned craft, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, has gotten clearance for a planned liftoff tomorrow at just after 10 a.m. PT from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. [Update, December 11 at 10:21 a.m. PT: The Associated Press reports that the rocket carrying the X-37B has launched.]

If the previous two trips into space are any indication, don't expect the X-37B to come home anytime soon -- or for the U.S. Air Force to say … Read more

Remote-vision quadcopter soars over LeWeb

PARIS -- LeWeb's focus this year on "the Internet of things" this year brought Net-enabled door locks, houseplant monitors, and footstep loggers to the conference stage. But the gadget that caught the most attention was a remote-controlled quadcopter.

Quadcopters are all the rage these days, popularized best by the Parrot AR.Drone. Here at LeWeb, startup Team BlackSheep showed its take on the tech with a model that's remotely piloted by an operator who sees what's going on from a camera mounted on the drone itself.

Raphael Pirker, founder of the company, piloted a TBS … Read more

Tackling an around-the-world plane flight -- without fossil fuel

One might say Bertrand Piccard has daring adventure in his blood.

The 54-year-old Swiss balloonist's grandfather set an altitude record, while his father was one of the first people to explore the deepest part of the world's oceans. But now Piccard and his partner Andre Borschberg are aiming to enter the record books with an around-the-world flight in a solar-powered plane that can fly at night without fossil fuel.

Piccard and Borschberg spoke with Bob Simon for a "60 Minutes" report to be broadcast tonight about the Solar Impulse, a slender aircraft that weighs only about … Read more

Watch the X-47B make its first catapult take-off

OK, so it was on dry land, not on an aircraft carrier. But first steps are first steps.

On Thursday, the U.S. Navy carried out its first-ever steam catapult launch of the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System -- see the video embedded below -- and was apparently quite happy with the way things turned out. Before the UCAS demonstrator can make an actual take-off from a carrier, it needs to show that it can handle the unique rigors of being flung slingshot-style into the air instead of making a more leisurely jaunt down a runway.

"This test, in … Read more

Lockheed's ADAM enters the laser weapons stakes

Someday, somebody will bring an actual laser weapon to combat operations where it'll count. Until then, watch for more puttering about with the occasional field test of this or that prototype.

The latest manifestation of the eternal desire by the defense establishment for directed-energy weapons comes from Lockheed Martin, which yesterday brought word of its Area Defense Anti-Munitions (ADAM) system. ADAM's business end is a 10-kilowatt fiber laser that since August has been taking target practice against "representative" airborne threats.

The tally, it must be said, seems rather slight. Lockheed said that in the tests ADAM … Read more

Carrier-bound X-47B drone passes remote-control test

How do you drive a jet-powered drone around the deck of an aircraft carrier? If you've ever guided a remote-control toy car around your kitchen floor, you'll have an idea.

Northrop Grumman said today that it has done its first shore-based tests of a wireless handheld controller that can steer its X-47B unmanned aerial vehicle, a key step toward getting the UAV ready for flight tests on an aircraft carrier in 2013.

In the trial run, which took place earlier this month, Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy used the project's Control Display Unit to roll … Read more

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier -- again

Chuck Yeager was 24 when he became the first human to break the speed of sound. And to celebrate the 65th anniversary of that history-making event, the 89-year-old former test pilot and now retired Air Force brigadier general did it again, flying in the rear seat of an F-15 that broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. on Sunday.

Yeager, whose exploits were chronicled in the book (and film) "The Right Stuff," gained worldwide notoriety when his Bell X-1 -- a 30 foot, 11 inch plane with a 28-foot wingspan -- reached a speed of 700 … Read more

Baumgartner makes record-setting skydive

Latest update: October 15 at 5:38 a.m. PT

One false start was enough for Felix Baumgartner.

On Sunday, the 43-year-old extreme skydiver ascended to the upper reaches of the atmosphere above Roswell, N.M., in a bid to come racing back down in a supersonic freefall.

At first, Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos team said that the unofficial top speed of the freefall was 1,137 kilometers per hour, or 706 miles per hour. Later, they raised that to 1,342.8 km/h, or 834.4 mph.

The team's expectation was that 690 mph would be … Read more

Photo time capsule to last 'billions of years' in space

"When humanity disappears, a ring of dead spacecraft will remain as evidence of our existence."

That comforting thought is how nonprofit arts group Creative Time introduces a project by multimedia artist Trevor Paglen to put a photo time capsule in space, where it will orbit our planet for thousands of years, perhaps long after we've blown each other up or otherwise expired. … Read more