The BelugaXL has entered into service, providing Airbus with 30% extra transport capacity in order to support the on-going production ramp-up of commercial aircraft programmes.

The aircraft, which is an integral part of Airbus’ industrial system, made its first operational flight, recently. This is the first of six BelugaXL to begin work alongside the BelugaST predecessors, with the additional aircraft being introduced between 2020 and 2023.

Launched just over 5 years ago, the entry into service milestone marks yet another successful achievement for the internal aircraft programme which was awarded Type Certification by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in November 2019, following an intensive flight test campaign that saw the BelugaXL complete more than 200 flight tests, clocking over 700 flight hours.

At 63 metres long and 8 metres wide, the BelugaXL has the largest cargo bay cross-section of all existing cargo aircraft worldwide. The BelugaXL can carry two A350 XWB wings compared to the BelugaST, which can only carry one. With a maximum payload of 51 tonnes, the BelugaXL has a range of 4 000km (2 200nm).

The BelugaXL is based on an A330-200 Freighter, enabling the re-use of existing components and equipment and is powered by Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines. The lowered cockpit, the cargo bay structure and the rear-end and tail were newly developed jointly with partners, giving the aircraft its distinctive look.

The BelugaXL is the latest addition to Airbus’ transportation portfolio. While air transport remains the primary method for transporting large aircraft components, Airbus also uses road, rail and sea transport to move parts between its production sites. Like the BelugaST, the aircraft will operate from 11 destinations in Europe, continuing to strengthen industrial capabilities and enabling Airbus to deliver on its commitments.

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner’s first mission ended historically when it became the first American orbital space capsule to land on American soil rather than in an ocean, recently.

The spacecraft’s crew module landed at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range at 5:48 a.m. Mountain time, after spending just over two days on orbit and checking off a number of flight test objectives. The last time a spacecraft landed at the historic White Sands Space Harbor runway was in 1982, when Space Shuttle Columbia touched down, ending its STS-3 mission.

Shortly after its December 20 launch and separation from its booster rocket, Starliner experienced a mission timing anomaly that made it use too much fuel to reach the intended destination of the International Space Station. Flight controllers were able to address the issue and put Starliner into a lower, stable orbit. The vehicle demonstrated key systems and capabilities before being signaled to return to Earth.

“The Starliner team’s quick recovery and ability to achieve many mission objectives – including safe deorbit, re-entry and landing – is a testament to the people of Boeing who have dedicated years of their lives working toward the achievement of commercial human spaceflight,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program. “Their professionalism and collaboration with our NASA customer in challenging conditions allowed us to make the most of this mission.”

The Starliner landing demonstrated the robustness of its landing systems, including its innovative parachutes and airbags.

Although this Starliner carried no people, it did have a passenger. An anthropometric test device, named “Rosie,” was in the commander’s seat for the entire mission. She was outfitted with about a dozen sensors that collected data to help prove Starliner is safe for future human crews.

Next, this crew module will be returned to Florida for data retrieval, analysis and refurbishment for future missions. It is the vehicle chosen to fly NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Josh Cassada, along with two international partner astronauts, on the first operational mission. In parallel, Boeing’s Starliner team is finalizing the vehicle that will fly Boeing astronaut Chris Ferguson and NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann on the Crewed Flight Test.

Boeing recently delivered the core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System (SLS) deep space exploration rocket, moving it out of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the agency’s Pegasus barge.

The event marks the first time a completed rocket stage has shipped out of Michoud since the end of the Apollo program. SLS Core Stage 1 is the largest single rocket stage ever built by NASA and its industry partners.

The rollout follows several weeks of final testing and check-outs after NASA’s declaration of “core stage complete”.

NASA will transport the SLS core stage to its Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for “Green Run” hot-fire engine tests later this year. After inspection and refurbishing for launch, the stage moves to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At Kennedy, the core stage will be integrated with the Interim Cryogenic Upper Stage (ICPS) and NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the moon.

“The Boeing SLS team has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with NASA and our supplier partners to face multiple challenges with ingenuity and perseverance, while keeping safety and quality at the forefront,” said John Shannon, Boeing SLS vice president and program manager.

SLS is the world’s most powerful rocket, evolvable and built to carry astronauts and cargo farther and faster than any rocket in history. Its unmatched capabilities will deliver human-rated spacecraft, habitats and science missions to the moon, Mars and beyond as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

“We are applying what we’ve learned from development of the first core stage to accelerate work on core stages 2 and 3, already in production at Michoud, as well as the Exploration Upper Stage that will power NASA’s most ambitious Artemis missions,” said Shannon.

Agility Robotics is launching Digit, a robot with arms and legs to work with humans and in human spaces, for commercial sale. Ford Motor Company is the first customer, receiving the first two robots off the line. This cooperation continues the existing partnership between Agility and Ford (www.agilityrobotics.com/ ford-partnership) to explore ways to help commercial vehicle customers, including autonomous vehicle businesses, make warehousing and delivery more efficient and affordable for their customers.

Key applications for further exploration are indoor or first-mile logistics and last-50-feet delivery. The research also will focus on how Ford’s commercial vehicles and Digit “talk” to each other and their surroundings through advanced connectivity technologies. For example, Ford’s connected vehicles can continually update cloud-based maps that can be shared with Digit so it doesn’t have to recreate the same type of information.

The team expects that, as Digit will be part of a package delivery service, this communication channel will also provide delivery specific information such as where a customer prefers packages to be left, or other individual package delivery needs. This communication channel also allows Digit to ask for help if something unexpected is encountered.

“As online retailing continues growing, we believe robots will help our commercial customers build stronger businesses by making deliveries more efficient and affordable for all of us,” said Ken Washington, vice president, Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, and Chief Technology Officer. “We learned a lot this year working with Agility, now we can accelerate our exploratory work with commercial Digit robots.”

Since the first Digit prototype was shown in May 2019, Agility Robotics has tested it extensively, refined the design, and added features to be ready for production and sale to customers. Upgrades and improvements include more advanced feet that allow Digit to balance on one foot or carefully navigate obstacles, new sensors to perceive and map the world for robot navigation, and customer-ready, powerful onboard computer hardware. “We’re excited about the technical capabilities and advanced legged mobility of Digit”, said Dr. Jonathan Hurst, CTO of Agility. “Videos can show a solid proof of concept – but this robot is ready to go out in the world in the hands of customers, and start to really explore pragmatic use cases.”

Agility sold its breakthrough robot Cassie as a bipedal research platform from August 2017 through July 2019 and has spent the latter half of 2019 transitioning production over to Digit. “Digit represents a major milestone for Agility,” said Dr. Damion Shelton, CEO of Agility. “For the first time, a full humanoid robot, with both mobility and manipulation capabilities, will be available for customer applications in a wide variety of industries, both indoor and outdoor. We look forward to showing off our work on both logistics and nonlogistics tasks in the coming months.”

Digit has been designed to walk upright without wasting energy, so it has no issue traversing the same types of environments most people do every day. Digit’s unique design also allows it to tightly fold itself up for easy storage in the back of a vehicle until it’s called into action. Once a vehicle arrives at its destination, Digit can be deployed to grab a package from the vehicle and carry out the final step in the delivery process. If it encounters an unexpected obstacle, it can send an image back to the vehicle to leverage additional computing power. The vehicle could even send that information into the cloud and request help from other systems to enable Digit to navigate, providing multiple levels of assistance that help keep the robot light and nimble. Digit’s light weight also helps ensure it has a long run time, which is essential for delivery businesses that operate continuously through the business day.

Former racing catamaran turned ship of the future, Energy Observer has made waves as it has been navigating its six-year odyssey around the world as the first energy-autonomous hydrogen vessel. Today, Toyota, official partner of Energy Observer and an avid supporter of their project from the start, announces that it has developed a fuel cell system for maritime applications, with its first delivery destined for Energy Observer.

Embarking in June 2017 from Saint- Malo Port in France, Energy Observer is an electrically propelled vessel of the future that is operated using a mix of renewable energies and an on-board system that produces carbon-free hydrogen from seawater. The operators of the vessel are on a mission to go and meet people in 50 countries and 101 ports during their voyage who are designing the future, with an aimto prove that a cleaner world is not only possible, but that the innovations can open some doors to a new economic expansion. Their activities also demonstrate and share potential solutions to champion an ecological and energy transition, as well as support tomorrow’s energy networks as they encourage providers to make the networks more efficient and applicable on a large scale.

Previously, Toyota’s fuel cell system, which was first introduced in the Toyota Mirai, the world’s first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle, proved its value as a propulsion system for automobiles. However, the company has more recently been exploring the use of its fuel cell system in other applications such as buses and trucks.

Toyota, a company aiming to develop a hydrogen society based on its challenge to “Establish a future society in Harmony with Nature” as stated in its Environmental Challenge 2050, was able to align with Energy Observer.’s mission and activities. From that common ground, the two have worked closely together on how a hydrogen fuel cell system could be adapted to martime applications, which eventually led to the introduction of Toyota’s maritime fuel cell technology and system.

The maritime-specific fuel cell system was developed by Toyota Technical Center Europe in a mere seven months. It required a re-design of the system, followed by the build and installation of the compact nfuel cell module. This was accomplished using components first introduced in the Toyota Mirai which were fitted into a more compact module suitable for marine applications. The project successfully demonstrates the adaptability of the Toyota fuel cell technology to a variety of applications, including those outside of land-based vehicles.

“We are very proud to embark the Toyota Fuel Cell System on our oceans passages, and test it in the roughest conditions. After three years and nearly 20 000 nautical miles of development, the Energy Observer energy supply and storage system is now very reliable and we look forward to the next step of the project : Get a reliable and affordable system available for our maritime community. We believe that the Toyota Fuel Cell System is the perfect component for this, industrially produced, efficient and safe. Being an ambassador for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our mission is to promoteclean energy solutions and we share with Toyota the same vision for a hydrogen society.” Victorien Erussard, founder and captain of Energy Observer.

The Toyota Fuel Cell System has proven its benefits already for many years in the Mirai, but more recently also in other applications such as buses and trucks. Using it for maritime transportation is again another step closer to the development of the hydrogen society. Toyota believes that hydrogen is the catalyst for energy decarbonisation and the technology acceptance can accelerate with the Toyota Fuel Cell System modular solution, which can be considered for a multitude of applications.