December 20, 2021 - No. 94 In This Issue : easyJet and Rolls-Royce to Collaborate on Future Aviation Sustainability Research : Blue-sky thinking: net-zero aviation is more than a flight of fantasy : Australia – Emerging Aviation Technology Partnerships (EATP) Program : Korean Air Develops Drone Swarm Technology to Inspect Aircraft : NEW AERIAL FIRE-MAPPING SYSTEM TO BE TESTED IN SA : Embry-Riddle Project to Vault Air Traffic Control into Next Generation Wins Innovation Award : Paving The Way: A Look At Pegasus Airlines’ Sustainability Efforts : Air NZ could take delivery of its first zero emissions aircraft as early as 2023 : FG To Establish Aviation University : Boom’s Quest to Make Supersonic Flights a Reality (Again) : SpaceX launches 52 Starlink satellites from California base easyJet and Rolls-Royce to Collaborate on Future Aviation Sustainability Research easyJet and Rolls-Royce have confirmed they will be working together on research into industry-wide sustainability solutions for commercial aircraft. The study, which will commence in January 2022 and run for up to two years, will seek to explore alternative energy and power solutions, including low carbon and zero-emission technologies, and their application for aircraft. The study will include analysis of wider elements of the aviation energy and operational ecosystem, including fuel production, transportation, storage and handling. The airline and world-leading engine manufacturer are working together to further develop knowledge of these topics in relation to both electrical and hydrogen-based power systems. For further insight and understanding, both companies intend to involve a wide range of expertise, including energy providers, airports and aviation safety regulators. David Morgan, director of flight operations, easyJet, said: “easyJet remains absolutely committed to sustainable flying and a zero-emissions future. We know that technology is a key driver to achieve our decarbonization targets. Disruptive technologies such as electric and hydrogen propulsion show great potential for short-haul airlines like easyJet and we look forward to collaborating with Rolls-Royce to support bringing this technology to maturity as early as possible.” Jason Ash, head of product development – Large Engines, Rolls-Royce, said: “We know that Sustainable Aviation Fuels already provide a drop-in solution, and so will have the most powerful impact on decarbonizing aviation and achieving Net Zero by 2050. But we also want to better understand other forms of propulsion, energy and power and their potential benefits along with the challenges in operation. We look forward to working closely with easyJet to increase our understanding in these areas.” https://www.aviationpros.com/airlines/press-release/21250858/easyjet-easyjet-and-rollsroyce-to-collaborate-on-future-aviation-sustainability-research Blue-sky thinking: net-zero aviation is more than a flight of fantasy As international air travel rebounds after COVID-19 restrictions, greenhouse gas emissions from aviation are expected to rise dramatically – and with it, scrutiny of the industry’s environmental credentials. Aviation emissions have almost doubled since 2000 and in 2018 reached one billion tonnes. Climate Action Tracker rates the industry’s climate performance as critically insufficient. As the climate change threat rapidly worsens, can aviation make the transition to a low-carbon future – and perhaps even reach net-zero emissions? The significant technological and energy disruption on the horizon for the industry suggests such a future is possible. But significant challenges remain. Achieving a net-zero aviation sector will require a huge collaborative effort from industry and government – and consumers can also play their part. Build back better The aviation sector’s progress in cutting emissions has been disappointing to date. For example, in February last year, research on the world’s largest 58 airlines found even the best-performing ones were not doing anywhere near enough to cut emissions. Most recently, at the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, the industry merely reasserted a commitment to a plan known as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. The scheme relies on carbon offsetting, which essentially pays another actor to reduce emissions on its behalf at lowest cost, and doesn’t lead to absolute emissions reduction in aviation. The scheme also encourages alternative cleaner fuels, but the level of emissions reduction between fuels varies considerably. Governments have generally failed to provide strong leadership to help the aviation sector to reduce emissions. This in part is because pollution from international aviation is not counted in the emissions ledger of any country, leaving little incentive for governments to act. Aviation is also a complex policy space to navigate, involving multiple actors around the world. However, COVID-19 has significantly jolted the aviation and travel sector, presenting an opportunity to build back better – and differently. Griffith University recently held a webinar series on decarbonising aviation, involving industry, academic and government experts. The sessions explored the most promising policy and practical developments for net-zero aviation, as well as the most significant hurdles. Nations soaring ahead Some governments are leading the way in driving change in the aviation industry. For example, as a result of government policy to make Sweden climate-neutral by 2045, the Swedish aviation industry developed a roadmap for fossil-free domestic flights by 2030, and for all flights originating from Sweden to be fossil-free by 2045. Achieving fossil-free flights requires replacing jet fuel with alternatives such as sustainable fuels or electric and hydrogen propulsion. The European Union plans to end current tax exemptions for jet fuel and introduce measures to accelerate the uptake of sustainable fuels. The United Kingdom is finalising its strategy for net-zero aviation by 2050 and a public body known as UK Research and Innovation is supporting the development of new aviation technologies, including hybrid-electric regional aircraft. Australia lacks a strategic framework or emissions reduction targets to help transition the aviation industry. The Emerging Aviation Technology Program seeks to reduce carbon emissions, among other goals. However, it appears to have a strong focus on freight-carrying drones and urban air vehicles, rather than fixed wing aircraft. Building tomorrow’s aircraft Low-emissions aircraft technology has developed substantially in the last five years. Advancements include electric and hybrid aircraft (powered by hydrogen or a battery) – such as that being developed by Airbus, Rolls Royce and Zero Avia – as well as sustainable aviation fuels. Each of these technologies can reduce carbon emissions, but only battery and hydrogen electric options significantly reduce non-CO₂ climate impacts such as oxides of nitrogen (NOx), soot particles, oxidised sulphur species, and water vapour. For electric aircraft to be net-zero emissions, they must be powered by renewable energy sources. As well as being better for the planet, electric and hydrogen aircraft are likely to have lower energy and maintenance costs than conventional aircraft. This decade, we expect a rapid emergence of electric and hybrid aircraft for short-haul, commuter, air taxi, helicopter and general flights. Increased use of sustainable aviation fuel is also likely. Although electric planes are flying, commercial operations are not expected until at least 2023 as the aircraft must undergo rigorous testing, safety and certification. Overcoming turbulence Despite real efforts by some industry leaders and governments towards making aviation a net-zero industry, significant strategic and practical challenges remain. Conversion to the commercial mainstream is not happening quickly enough. To help decarbonise aviation in Australia, industry and government should develop a clear strategy for emissions reduction with interim targets for 2030 and 2040. This would keep the industry competitive and on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. Strategic attention and action is also needed to: advance aircraft and fuel innovation and development update regulatory and certification processes for new types of aircraft enhance production and deployment of new aviation fuels and technologies reduce fuel demand through efficiencies in route and air traffic management create “greener” airport operations and infrastructure build capability with pilots and aerospace engineers. The emissions created by flights and itineraries can vary substantially. Consumers can do their part by opting for the lowest-impact option, and offsetting the emissions their flight creates via a credible program. Consumers can also choose to fly only with airlines and operators that have committed to net-zero emissions. Net-zero aviation need not remain a flight of fantasy, but to make it a reality, emissions reduction must be at the heart of aviation’s pandemic bounce-back. https://theconversation.com/blue-sky-thinking-net-zero-aviation-is-more-than-a-flight-of-fantasy-171940 Australia – Emerging Aviation Technology Partnerships (EATP) Program The EATP program is intended to encourage adoption of emerging aviation technologies (such as drones, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft and new aviation propulsion systems) to address community needs, particularly in regional Australia. The EATP Program will enable the Australian Government to partner with industry on the development and deployment of emerging aviation technology, and on research around enablers of such technology. It is intended partnerships will also bring together other parties as required to deliver projects, such as state and territory government agencies, local councils and communities. Through these partnerships, industry will receive support to trial the deployment of new aviation technology and the Government will gain real-world experience and a valuable opportunity to test the regulatory frameworks needed for the sector as it grows. This will ultimately help ensure Australia is positioned to accommodate new aviation operations with increased technical complexity and at a greater scale. The EATP Program will have an emphasis on Australian and international operators planning local investments and growing the Australian market. Partnerships between Government and industry to prove the viability of new services and operational concepts, conduct enabling research and to support the introduction of new aviation technology, will enable Australian technology developers and manufacturers to fast-track opportunities for their products. The EATP program will have two rounds. The Round Two Grant Opportunity will likely be announced in 2022. Eligibility: This grant opportunity is open for applications from individuals, partnerships, and incorporated bodies provided they have an Australian Business Number and are registered for the Goods and Services tax. This may include a foreign corporation that can demonstrate how funding will benefit the Australian emerging aviation sector and local businesses and communities, or a joint (consortia) application with an eligible lead organisation in partnership with (for example) a foreign corporation, or with a local government or state/territory government agency or body. Grant Activity Timeframe: To 30/06/2023 (likely to be extended) Total Amount Available (AUD): $30,600,000.00 Instructions for Application Submission: To apply for this grant opportunity please submit your application/s to: Director, Agency Engagement and Emerging Technology Programs Section, via email to EATP@infrastructure.gov.au Other Instructions: All applications must be received by 11:30pm AEDT on Thursday 31 March 2022 https://www.suasnews.com/2021/12/australia-emerging-aviation-technology-partnerships-eatp-program/ Korean Air Develops Drone Swarm Technology to Inspect Aircraft One of the latest applications for drones is inspecting aircraft for damage and wear. Korean Air is taking the concept to the next level by using multiple robot aircraft to make the work faster and easier. The airline says it has developed technology that for the first time allows a swarm of drones to inspect an aircraft exterior. Last week it demonstrated the concept on one of its aircraft inside a hangar in Seoul. Four unmanned aerial vehicles have been programmed to simultaneously take photos of preplanned areas of a plane. If one of the drones fails to operate, the system is configured to automatically complete the mission using the remaining mini-aircraft. Drone inspections are attracting interest from airlines, maintenance, and repair organizations, and leasing companies. Aviation safety rules require airlines to periodically conduct visual checks of the fuselage. Manually checking the upper section of a large plane is challenging and requires lift equipment. Drones can conduct the inspections more safely, with increased accuracy and speed, while eliminating subjectivity, developers say. Drone inspections can reduce the amount of time an aircraft is out of service, helping airlines maintain flight schedules and revenues. Using pilotless aircraft after a lightning strike, for example, could allow an airline to quickly determine if there is any damage without having to pull a plane into a hangar, according to maintenance experts. Korean Air said a drone swarm can visually inspect an aircraft in about four hours compared to 10 hours for human inspections. The drones, equipped with high-performance cameras, can identify objects up to 1 millimeter in size, allowing for the detection of tiny defects that can't be seen from above with the naked eye. The inspection data is shared through the cloud, enabling employees to easily check inspection results anywhere and anytime. The airline has also applied a collision-avoidance system and geo-fencing to maintain safe distances from surrounding facilities and prevent drones from breaking away from the mission area. Korean Air said it will work to perfect safety and worker interfaces, stabilize operations and increase inspection accuracy through continuous trials before officially deploying inspection drones next year. Another company focused on drone inspection of aircraft is Mainblades. In August, the drone developer conducted a fully automated outdoor airport inspection of an Airbus A330 commercial aircraft at an active airfield. It was the first time such an inspection has been conducted in Europe, according to the company. The inspection took place at an airbase in Woensdrecht, the Netherlands. Mainblades currently operates inside hangars due to airport limitations regarding the use of drones but said it continues to validate the case for outdoor airport inspections. "If an aircraft lands and it is damaged on the way, for example by lightning or birds, it must now first go to a closed location such as a hangar. That way you lose a lot of time. Besides this, hangar space is expensive to rent and not always available," which makes open-air inspections an attractive alternative, Dejan Borota, co-founder and director of Mainblades, said in a blog post on the company's website. The outdoor test enabled the company to identify obstacles and necessary procedures so it can build an operation that is scalable worldwide, he said. Automated inspections could be useful during lease transitions, said Jack Bos, technical director at TrueNoord, an aircraft leasing company, in a video of the outdoor inspection event. Inspectors typically check aircraft to make sure all damage repairs are correctly recorded, but that can be difficult to do on top of the fuselage, tail or wings, he explained. https://www.benzinga.com/news/21/12/24702063/korean-air-develops-drone-swarm-technology-to-inspect-aircraft NEW AERIAL FIRE-MAPPING SYSTEM TO BE TESTED IN SA A new aerial system that can map the path and growth of bushfires in real-time will soon begin trials in South Australia. Adelaide-based company FireFlight Technologies has created a system that uses thermal imaging sensors mounted to a manned aircraft, to detect flames through kilometres of thick and billowing smoke, and accurately track a fire’s path. This crucial information about the blaze can then be delivered to local firefighting efforts within one minute, according to FireFlight founder and CEO Dr Paul Dare. With support from the University of South Australia’s Innovation and Collaboration Centre, FireFlight has been awarded $100,000 under the state government’s Go2Gov program in order to produce the trial. The trial will see FireFlight team up with the South Australia Country Fire Service (CFS) to provide real-time fire mapping from above throughout this year’s bushfire season, with the hopes of using such information to limit the destruction of bushfires. Dare, also a volunteer firefighter, has previously used the FireFlight system to air in the 2019-20 Kangaroo Island bushfires, to provide key information on the blaze to firefighters and defence personnel. The system has also been used overseas to track wildfires in Montana and California, as well as trials in Queensland and Tasmania, however, the South Australian trial will be the first to see the system implemented throughout the entire bushfire season. “The FireFlight system will deliver real-time fire intelligence to incident controllers, helping them to efficiently deploy resources such as firefighters, fire trucks and firebombers where they are really needed,” Dr Dare said. “The fire maps provided by the FireFlight system will show exactly where the fire is at that moment. “The maps can be updated on a minute-by-minute basis, enabling the CFS to monitor the progression of the fire and better understand its behaviour.” Dare said that the season-long length of this trial will allow FireFlight to “make changes to the system” as necessary, “based on feedback from the CFS, so that we can ensure we are meeting their needs”. CFS manager, state air operations, Nik Stanley said the trial will help to further develop the technology. “The CFS is looking forward to seeing the results of further trials, developments and evaluations of the FireFlight fire mapping technology,” Stanley said. “The current trial will be fully evaluated at the end of this fire danger season by our Fire Behavioural Analysis team within the CFS and our partner agencies.” Meanwhile, Minister for Innovation and Skills David Pisoni said this grant under the Go2Gov program is “another example of a project that pushes the boundaries and provides a solution to an important problem”. “As South Australia faces another potentially dangerous bushfire season, this trial will help the CFS identify how a bushfire is moving so they can best allocate their resources to fight it,” Pisoni said. UniSA’s Innovation & Collaboration Centre director, Jasmine Vreugdenburg, said FireFlight Technologies was leading the way in crucial disaster management innovation. “It’s crucial that Australia becomes a leader in this space as climate change continues to have a devastating impact across the globe,” Vreugdenburg said. “FireFlight stands as a testimony to what can be achieved when we provide innovators and startups with the support and financial backing they need – it can change the world for good.” The news comes after a former deputy fire commissioner of NSW said “not much seems to have been done” a year to the day since the Bushfires Royal Commission report was published. “We don’t think much has changed since the fires of 2019-20,” said Jim Smith. “We don’t feel any safer than we did before.” The technically titled Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements released its final report 12 months ago. Its most significant recommendation was the call for a new “sovereign aerial firefighting capability” that can be easily shared between areas in need. However, no such fleet has yet to be formed, with the federal government’s formal response being that it simply “notes” the recommendation. Smith, a former Deputy Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, was speaking in his capacity as a member of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA), a campaign group composed of 33 former fire and emergency service chiefs. “Many people are living in fear of the next fire,” said Smith. “Without emissions reductions this decade, it’s just going to keep getting worse. At the very least, every recommendation of the Royal Commission should be implemented.” https://australianaviation.com.au/2021/12/new-aerial-fire-mapping-system-to-be-tested-in-sa/ Embry-Riddle Project to Vault Air Traffic Control into Next Generation Wins Innovation Award DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA — The way America monitors the National Airspace System (NAS) will soon transition to a new platform to improve efficiency and predictability of air travel. To aid in that initiative, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University collaborated with The Boeing Company and Concepts Beyond to conduct two flight demonstrations this summer, the results of which recently won an Innovation Award at the World Air Traffic Management (ATM) Congress. Serving as the primary contractor on the project, Embry-Riddle has been engaged with air traffic control research and development for over a decade. Researchers joined the 4DT Live Flight Demo Team to help transition air traffic control toward Trajectory Based Operations (TBO), which will ultimately provide time and fuel savings across the industry. “When we started in 2008, our focus was on what technology, standards and procedures would be in the NAS in 2025,” said Chris Kokai, the team’s project manager and director of operations of the Florida NextGen Program. “But there is no clear finish line that says we are ‘done.’ NextGen and its successor initiatives have and will evolve over time.” Funded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the project supports the FAA’s goal to modernize the United States’ air transportation system. This Next Generation Air Transportation System (or NextGen) will offer precise locations of aircraft in four dimensions: latitude, longitude, altitude and time. This four-dimensional trajectory (4DT) system will connect every aircraft with every ground communications center through a virtual data link. “By engaging NextGen concepts and technology, airplanes may spend less time on the ground prior too takeoff,” Kokai said, highlighting the benefits of the system to travelers. “Accordingly, by selecting more efficient flight-plans, an airline may get a passenger to their destination in less time than prior to the adoption of NextGen concepts and procedures.” The team’s recent flight tests, conducted on a Boeing 787-10 flying from a point near the Glasgow industrial airport to Gary/Chicago International Airport, Indiana, were the culmination of 43 unique lab tests conducted over a yearlong period. The flights showcased the benefits of a trajectory-based positioning system and were meant to encourage continued government-industry partnership in the ongoing development of NextGen technology. This project highlights just one facet of Embry-Riddle’s involvement in the FAA’s NextGen initiative. The Florida NextGen Test Bed opened on Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus in 2008. “One of the most important things I learned from working on this project was how to embrace and adapt to the corporate culture in the U.S.,” said alumna Ramya Murthy, who graduated with a Master of Science in Aviation Finance in 2020 and served as project manager assistant on the project. “While working on this project, I had the pleasure of attending a few networking sessions with industry bigwigs, enabling me to build strong professional connections, learn more about the field and simultaneously find career opportunities.” The experience is something Murthy sees as unique to Embry-Riddle. “I have been able to demonstrate my capabilities to hiring managers,” she said. “The overall experience has not only been fruitful in my professional career but has helped develop my personality in a positive way. … I found Embry-Riddle to be one of the best avenues to quench my thirst for knowledge.” Next, the project will focus on integration of software supporting industry-wide collaboration of NextGen technologies, planning and revising flight plans across collaborating airlines, refinement of FAA trajectory predictions and working to educate stakeholders in the benefits of the new system. Additional participants in the project include United Airlines and Delta Airlines, the FAA, LS Technologies LLC and the National Air Traffic Control Association. https://www.aviationpros.com/education-training/press-release/21250754/embryriddle-aeronautical-university-embryriddle-project-to-vault-air-traffic-control-into-next-generation-wins-innovation-award Paving The Way: A Look At Pegasus Airlines’ Sustainability Efforts Turkish carrier Pegasus Airlines has 30 years of history behind it. During this time, it has established itself as a key low-cost operator, offering useful connections between Europe and Asia via Istanbul. Looking towards the next 30 years of its existence, the airline recognizes its social responsibilities as far as aspects like sustainability are concerned. As such, it has several strategies in place to help it pave the way in this domain. Simple Flying recently learned about these during an interview with Pegasus CCO Güliz Öztürk. Net-zero: the ultimate goal Across the airline industry, 2050 is being viewed as a key date in terms of wider progress regarding the reduction of carbon emissions. Many airlines, airports, and alliances have set a collective target to have reached net-zero carbon emissions by this stage. As it happens, Pegasus Airlines recently added itself to the list. The Turkish low-cost carrier considers climate change to be a key topic. Subsequently, it “[manages] all [its] operations and activities under a ‘sustainable environment‘ approach.” Öztürk explains that: “In October 2021, at IATA’s 77th Annual General Meeting, we joined the world’s leading airlines to pledge to achieve ‘Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050.’ Interim targets to keep Pegasus on track With 2050 being so far away, and reaching net-zero carbon emissions being such an ambitious goal, you might wonder how airlines plan on achieving this aim. In the case of Pegasus, the Istanbul-based budget operator plans to keep itself on track by adhering to interim targets over the next 29 years. The first of these is fast approaching. Öztürk states: “In December 2021, we set our 2030 interim target for carbon emissions: to reduce our flight-related carbon (CO2) emissions per unit passenger kilometer (RPK) by 20% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. We are restructuring all our operations and activities in line with this goal.” Fleet modernization will play a key role One aspect of Pegasus Airlines’ operations that has come under consideration in terms of restructuring to meet its interim emissions target is its fleet. Simple Flying took an in-depth look at the Turkish low-cost carrier’s fleet plans earlier this week, with the main headline being that it will soon only operate Airbus jets. In terms of sustainability, Öztürk states that: “Within the framework of our fleet strategy, we foresee that we will reduce our emissions by increasing the number of our more fuel-efficient Airbus A320neo model aircraft.” Pegasus Airlines presently operates 44 standard A320neos and seven stretched-fuselage A321neos. However, it has more than 50 examples of the latter still on order. The A320neo family will help Pegasus become more sustainable, with Öztürk adding that it will: “… [bring] in a new era for more eco-friendly travel by reducing fuel per seat-mile costs by 15% compared to its counterparts, and reducing emissions and providing more quiet travel, thus allowing us to take steps in a greener direction.” Carbon offsetting since 2015 In recent years, carbon offsetting has also become a more important topic for planet conscious passengers that want to negate the impact of their travels. Tracking carbon emissions is something that Pegasus has done since 2015. As of October this year, it has also begun disclosing its carbon footprint to investors every month. Öztürk explains: “We have been providing reports to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) since 2015, and have been awarded at least a B grade since the beginning. In 2020, we received an A-, which was the highest score awarded to a Turkey-based airline to date.” Future carbon offset work Moving forward, the airline plans to offset all of its scheduled flights for the next few years. However, before it can do this, it needs ICAO “to announce the sectoral growth factor” that will allow Pegasus to calculate how much carbon it needs to offset. Öztürk adds that: “Once this is announced, we will decide which offsetting project options to take, such as wind turbines, energy generation from biogas, and solar solutions. Not all offset investment options are accepted by the authorities. Therefore, we will make our selection based on the framework outlined by ICAO Corsia offsetting requirements.” Pegasus Airlines is also considering how to garner greater engagement from passengers when it comes to carbon offsetting. After all, the ability to offset journeys may become more of a pull factor for passengers amid the climate crisis. Öztürk told Simple Flying: “One of our near-term projects includes giving our guests the option to select the offsetting projects of their choice for their flights. Initially, we will begin with our corporate offsetting projects, then gradually extend this to include our guests.” Longer-term goals Of course, carbon offsetting isn’t the only way in which airlines can try to carve out a more sustainable future. In the coming years, companies worldwide are looking to catalyze developments in the field of alternative fuels and propulsion systems. With this in mind, Pegasus Airlines is keeping an eye on new developments. Indeed, Öztürk confirmed that: “In the long term, our sustainability efforts will focus on the use of SAFs, new technology aircraft, and carbon capture technologies.” On the whole, it was eye-opening to hear about the various timescales for Pegasus Airlines’ sustainability projects. It is clear that, while the Turkish low-cost carrier is eyeing fleet and network growth, it will endeavor to do so sustainably. It will certainly be interesting to see how it gets along in terms of meeting its various admirable emissions targets. https://simpleflying.com/pegasus-airlines-sustainability/ Air NZ could take delivery of its first zero emissions aircraft as early as 2023 Air New Zealand has outlined what it needs from zero emissions aircraft and is asking new generation aircraft companies to build and deliver one by as early as 2023. This month the national carrier issued a zero emissions aircraft “product requirements document (PRD)” which outlines specifications and requirements for new generation aircraft. The PRD says Air New Zealand aims to find long term partners in developing “novel propulsion” which encompasses emerging technology including hydrogen/battery electric, hydrogen combustion or hybrid. The focus of the PRD is on its domestic turboprop fleet which produces about 7 per cent of total emissions. One option the airline is exploring is retrofitting existing turboprop aircraft with novel propulsion technology. Air New Zealand currently operates 52 turboprops made up of 23 Q300 aircraft and 29 ATR72-600 aircraft. These are the likely candidates for replacement with novel propulsion technology. Air New Zealand had a goal of being delivered a one to nine seater zero emissions aircraft by 2023 to 2025, the PRD said. “This option covers technology that is currently in development, likely at the ground testing phase, but moving quickly towards first flight in the next 24 months with commercial certification underway.” These aircraft could be used for freight, training and single lines of flying, it says. By 2026 to 2030 it aims to have “supplementary” zero emissions aircraft ranging from one to 50 plus seats. “The types of missions will ideally be passenger services however freight concepts are also of interest especially if the aircraft progression is targeted at a later passenger version.” By 2031 to 2035 it would look to buy a new technology replacement fleet. “We have an ambition to be a global leader in driving a shift to novel propulsion aircraft with an entry to service before 2030,” the PRD says The airline has a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and sees electric or hydrogen powered aircraft as a key pillar in its sustainability strategy. However, the airline acknowledged that even with the full deployment of aviation decarbonisation technologies, including electric, hybrid and hydrogen powered aircraft, and sustainable aviation fuel, there was no current technology mix that could enable the industry to absolutely decarbonise by 2050, the PRD said. On top of this, the industry’s share of emissions would continue to increase in coming decades as other sectors decarbonise more quickly, it said. The PRD said Air New Zealand was well-placed for the early deployment of novel propulsion aircraft because it had a large turboprop fleet operating in a domestic network. The maximum range for a turboprop on its current domestic network was 768 kilometres. But 60 per cent of its turboprop flights were less than 350km. Air New Zealand head of fleet strategy Baden Smith said its existing memorandum of understanding with Airbus was for larger aircraft and had a relatively long timeline. Smaller companies would likely be leaders in zero emissions technology initially, he said. Before releasing the PRD Air New Zealand had been “inundated” with enquiries about operating new generation aircraft from both small and large companies wanting to partner with it, he said. The PRD was a way of detailing what Air New Zealand was looking for in a new generation aircraft and setting out a realistic timeline to make it a reality, he said. He said it was also Air New Zealand's way of taking some leadership on the issue and telling manufacturers what it needed rather than waiting for them to come to it. Historically, selecting an aircraft type came down to choosing from either Boeing or Airbus, but with new generation aircraft there was a range of startups to choose from, he said. “This new technology doesn't necessarily just come from the incumbents.” In assessing tenders Air New Zealand would look at where a company's technology was at, what the commercial state of the technology was, and whether the roadmap of the company could meet Air New Zealand's expectations, he said. “We're really wanting to understand where everyone is going with the technology.” Air New Zealand would likely select a handful of candidates that had the potential to deliver on the criteria it had set, he said. “While we might not be signing an order immediately off the back of it, that's ultimately where we want to get to.” He said the technology initially focused on regional routes because the range and demand was more suited, he said. The PRD notes that Air New Zealand has in the past operated a breadth of domestic markets and smaller aircraft, including a fleet of 19 seat Beechcraft 1900. Smith said this was to highlight that it was open to operating smaller aircraft than what it had now. “We're realistic that the technology will slowly build over time and if we want to get there quickly we probably have to recognise that these smaller aircraft are where it's going to start.” Suppliers have until March 1 to get their proposals in. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/127332451/air-nz-could-take-delivery-of-its-first-zero-emissions-aircraft-as-early-as-2023 FG To Establish Aviation University The federal government is to establish a Pan-African Aviation University with the aim of building capacity within the aviation and aerospace management sectors to meet up with local and regional demands in the sector. The Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, announced this in Katsina at the maiden matriculation ceremony of the Meteorological Institute of Science and Technology, Katsina. The African aviation and aerospace university, according to the minister, will produce world-class graduates that will become experts in aviation and aerospace science to service the increasing demand for pilots and aeronautical professionals in Nigeria and the Africa sub-region. He said ongoing reforms in the aviation sector were aimed at making Nigeria a center of excellence in aviation and aerospace management in Africa which will reduce loss of revenue to foreign institutions and improve overall competence in the aviation and aerospace industry. “The African Aviation and Aerospace University will be sited in Abuja. The federal government will establish it in partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, and some member countries of the organization within the African continent. The university will be the first of its kind in Africa, it will be involved with research and development and allow other aspects of civil aviation and aerospace technology,” Sirika stated. He urged the matriculating students of the Meteorological Institute of Science and Technology to remain focused in the pursuit of academic excellence in the field and appealed to the Katsina State government to allocate additional plots of land to the institute to enable it to construct more learning facilities. In his speech, the Director-General of the Nigerian Metrological Agency (NIMET), Professor Mansur Bako Matazu said the establishment of the institute will go a long way in boosting manpower to meet emerging challenges and drive the needed growth in the meteorological sub-sector. He noted that the program was designed to undertake short-term specialised programmes and refresher courses to build capacity in the sector particularly with the increasing threat of climate change and the need to adapt to it and mitigate its effects on livelihoods and the environment. Earlier, the Registrar of the institute, Dr Bishir Gambo, said a total of 114 students were being matriculated as the first set of intakes for the diploma course run by the institution. He said the institute which was established in 2019 will continue to expand its curriculum, infrastructure, and academic programs to meet up with contemporary demands for capacity building in the metrological and climate services sector. https://tribuneonlineng.com/fg-to-establish-aviation-university/ Boom’s Quest to Make Supersonic Flights a Reality (Again) ONBOARD MY FIRST plane in well over a year, since the start of the pandemic, I settle into seat 20F of United Airlines 1450, nonstop Newark to Denver on a twin-engine Boeing 737-900. There’s a covalent sensation of nostalgia and novelty, like seeing a familiar place with fresh eyes, rebooting muscle memory grown soft from disuse. As the familiar patter crackles over the PA system—“flight attendants, stand by for all-call and prepare for cross check”—my eyes are drawn to the monitor on the seat back in front of me. To the rambunctious beat of hip-hop duo WEARETHEGOOD’s “Boom,” the words “SUPERSONIC IS HERE” flash across the screen, followed by the striking image of a blindingly glossy, impossibly svelte white plane (“JOINING THE UNITED FLEET”), with a pronouncedly pointy nose and arcing delta wings undulating backwards and outwards from the midsection. “CUT FLIGHT TIME IN HALF,” the ad continues, with an eye-catching series of itineraries: San Francisco to Tokyo in six hours, Newark to London in three and a half. That latter trip, it’s worth noting, would be shorter than my currently scheduled domestic flight, which, owing to an elongated flight path due to “weather” in the Midwest, ends up being four hours and 32 minutes, at a speed of 900 kph. By the time I was over Nebraska, in a supersonic world I could have been across the Atlantic. Supersonic is not—as of yet—actually here, despite the seductive geometry and messaging of the advertisement by United, which has signed on to buy 15 planes that have not yet been built (but have generated a fair amount of positive media attention in an otherwise disastrous year). Where it is, at least putatively, is propped up on a platform inside the headquarters of Boom Supersonic, a low-slung building adjacent to Centennial Airport in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. Inside a sprawling hangar, filled with racks of parts and clusters of desks, overlooked by a banner high on a wall declaring “THE FUTURE IS SUPERSONIC,” rests the XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator, a two-thirds scale version of the larger plane, named Overture, that Boom hopes will one day take to the skies—at 1.7 times the speed of sound. When I first meet Blake Scholl, Boom’s cofounder and CEO, on the morning after my subsonic flight to Denver, he tells me I’ve come at a propitious moment. “This is actually a really big week,” he says as we don safety hats and glasses, “because we powered up the airplane for the first time this week. And then fuel goes onboard the airplane for the first time on Sunday. And then we’re just a few weeks away from running the engines.” At some point down the road, on a test strip in the Mojave Desert, the XB-1 will have a taxi test, and, at some point after that, a flight test. Loaded to the hilt with sensors, it is a virtual flying probe. Scholl predicts that “an enormous amount of learning will come out of this plane.” Early on—because, as Scholl explains, you “design the cockpit around the pilot”—Boom tapped two test pilots: Bill Shoemaker, a Navy pilot and Stanford University astrophysicist who, prior to coming to Boom, was chief test pilot at Zee Aero, the seminal Larry Page–funded startup working on electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft; and Chris “Duff“ Guarente, who flew F-22s for the US Air Force and whose previous role was chief test pilot for Scaled Composites, the legendary experimental aircraft company founded by Burt Rutan. “We’ve got a Navy rockstar and an Air Force rockstar,” says Scholl. “They’re going to have to arm wrestle to see who gets to bust the sound barrier.” There is, of course, nothing new about flying supersonic. US Air Force legend Chuck Yeager did it in 1947, before American households even had color television, comparing it to a “poke through Jell-O,” and there’s an inevitable Back to the Future air about Boom’s enterprise. To the casual observer, the profile of the XB-1 recalls a petite version of the iconic mothership of supersonic flight, the Concorde, one of only two supersonic passenger aircraft to have ever flown (the other being the Soviet Union’s Tupolev Tu-144). But this, says Scholl, is not your grandfather’s supersonic plane. While the planes of Boom, as the name would indicate, will share with Concorde the signature sound of crossing the sound barrier, in many other ways they will diverge. The most noticeable difference is the absence of the downward-angled nose that was Concorde’s signature visual feature. “That had nothing to do with aerodynamics,” Scholl says. “It was about the ability to see the runway.” Subsequent advances in technology mean that Boom’s pilots will do most of their viewing through a “virtual window”—a high-resolution display powered by what Boom says are thousands of sensors. Similarly, advances in computing power and simulation technology—“virtual wind-tunnels”—mean that while Concorde, Scholl notes, “had about a dozen wind-tunnel tests,” today, “you can do hundreds or even thousands of iterations in simulations.” Where Concorde was made out of aluminum alloy, the XB-1 is built from a lighter carbon-fiber composite. Where Concorde employed inefficient afterburners to generate sufficient thrust, Boom has quieter, more efficient turbofan engines at its disposal. And while Concorde burned conventional jet fuel—more than a ton of the stuff just to get to the runway—Boom says its planes will run on 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), made from renewable wastes ranging from fatty acids to “forest cover” fuels made from fallen trees, leaves, and other biomass. (While SAF is touted as providing up to an 80 percent reduction in lifecycle carbon emissions—and, as reported in a recent study in the Nature journal Communications Earth and Environment, a 50 to 70 percent reduction in contrail formation, which itself is believed to lead to climate warming—there are real questions about how much of the stuff there will be. As the International Council on Clean Transport notes: “We estimate that there is a resource base to meet approximately 5.5 per cent of the European Union’s projected 2030 jet fuel demand using advanced SAFs.” And that’s the optimistic projection.) And while only 14 Concordes were ever produced, United has already ordered 15 Overture jets for its fleet. “When we talk about an order,” Scholl says, “what we mean is industry standard terms, including nonrefundable, meaningful upfront cash payments.” Which makes it, he says, “the first true order of supersonic airplanes since the 1970s.” THE LAST ERA of supersonic passenger flight ended, yes, with a sonic boom, but also a whimper. By the time the last Concorde, British Airways Flight 002, departed New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on October 22, 2003—its passengers due to arrive in London earlier than they left—the rarefied market for civilian supersonic air travel had been in retreat. “Nobody will think about whether it was a commercial success or not,” said Lord Sterling, one of the boldfaced names onboard the celebrity-packed final flight. “They will say this is another frontier which the human race has broken through.” And indeed, despite the air of glamour, the exquisite Raymond Loewy–designed cutlery that Andy Warhol implored passengers to steal, and the fact that, as Lawrence Azerrad notes in his book Supersonic, the plane flew so fast—16 km in the time it took to pour a glass of champagne—that it actually stretched during flight, there was always the lurking sense the Concorde existed simply as proof that it could. That idea came at a huge expense in government subsidies, so much so that it birthed the economic concept known as the “Concorde fallacy,” which, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, means: “the idea that you should continue to spend money on a project, product, etc., in order not to waste the money or effort you have already put into it, which may lead to bad decisions.” Concorde had been the result of a decades-long fever dream of supersonic civilian flight, buoyed by postwar technological and economic optimism and fueled by Cold War competitiveness (the Soviets got there a few months earlier). But the sound barrier was only one constraint. “Because of economic and political factors,” argues Lawrence Benson in his book Quieting the Boom, “developing such an aircraft became more than a purely technological challenge—and thus proved to be in some ways even more of a technological challenge than sending astronauts to the Moon.” NASA, after all, didn’t have to worry about finding paying passengers, or bothering people under its flightpath. Throughout the 1960s, Benson notes, the US Air Force, along with the Federal Aviation Administration, conducted large-scale tests on the effect of sonic booms: on buildings, on people, on incubated chicken eggs. In one test, the National Park Service even tried to use the shock waves of F-106 fighter jets to spark controlled avalanches in Montana. In the end, the FAA banned civil aircraft from traveling faster than Mach 1 over land. Boom, like Concorde, will have to go subsonic over land. But Scholl insists there “are hundreds of routes on the planet where you can give passengers an enormous speed-up flying supersonic over water and high subsonic over land.” Even after Concorde’s demise, the idea of supersonic civilian flight stayed alive, nurtured by deep-pocketed dreamers. In 2004, Fortune magazine observed that the market was “starting to get excited about a new generation of hot little jets that would warp the very fabric of space-time while meeting noise and environmental regulations.” Brian Foley, an aviation consultant who for many years worked for French aerospace concern Dassault Aviation (which, he says, “looked at supersonic”), says that over the past few decades, two things have remained constant when it comes to civil supersonic transport. “The first is that no one denies there’s a market for supersonic jets,” he says. “The other thing is that manufacturers keep saying it will be within 10 years.” But those goalposts, as with self-driving cars, keep getting pushed out. Projects have come and gone; earlier this year, Reno, Nevada–based startup Aerion, founded by billionaire investor Robert Bass and backed by Boeing, gave up on its quest to build an eight-to-10-passenger supersonic business jet. Still in business are a number of rivals, including Boston-based Spike and California-based Exosonic; unlike Boom, they are working on “quiet boom” planes that would theoretically pass regulators’ restrictions and thus be able to fly supersonic over land (another company, Atlanta-based Hermeus, with funding from the US Air Force, is working on an aircraft designed to hit Mach 5). No one is as far along as Boom in terms of having a near-flyable demonstrator. “Progress,” says Foley, “goes at the speed of money.” And so why might Boom, which Scholl likes to say is “the only private supersonic company on the planet funded all the way through to flight test,” be able to succeed where so many have failed? ONE REASON MIGHT be Scholl himself. Supersonic air travel is, he admits as we tour Boom’s facilities, a “non-sequitur on [his] résumé.” His zest for entrepreneurship started in high school, when he built an internet service provider in his parent’s basement. After getting a degree in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, he started and sold a few companies, and did stints at Amazon and Groupon (of the latter, he jokes: “There’s nothing like working on internet coupons to make you want to work on something you love”). And that something was aviation. He started flying in college, finally got his license in 2007, and when he sold his first company, he was going to buy an airplane. Instead, he started an airplane company. Like many Silicon Valley executives, he can come across like a walking pitch deck, veering between techy details on afterburners and grand statements tinged with techno-optimism. “If you look back,” he says, “we haven’t had a World War since we’ve had jets.” He deflects very real hurdles—like the fact that a supersonic plane doesn’t have the fuel capacity to go from, say, Sydney to London—with the assured, there’s-an-app-for-that optimism of the serial entrepreneur. “LA to Sydney today is a 15-hour flight,” he says. “We’ll be able to do it in eight, and that includes stopping for fuel in Tahiti.” He compares refueling to a race-car pit stop. “You won’t get out of your seat. The flight attendants will give you a cocktail. You’ll be on the ground for less than a half-hour.” The plane, he notes, will have four high-pressure fueling points: “It’s designed for that use case.” But there’s no denying the passion, the almost boyish enthusiasm, as he walks me through a progression of XB-1 scale models, zeroing in on the minor iteration changes (“the sweep of the wing is too aggressive”) with unreserved zeal. Scholl argues there’s a sort of “bystander effect” that can happen with innovation. “Sometimes,” he says, “the most obvious problems with the most obvious solutions get ignored” because everyone assumes they must have already been tried. He says his insight was simple: “Let’s give people a nice seat, speed up the flight, let people sleep in their beds at home instead of on an airplane, and let’s make the economics click without any fundamental unobtanium.” Why wouldn’t a big player like Boeing or Airbus already have done it? He cites business theorist Clayton Christensen’s famous “innovator’s dilemma,” by which incumbent players in established markets make only incremental improvements to a product—until a “disruptor” comes along and changes the category. “If you look at Boeing,” Scholl says, “they’ve got their cash cows, the 777, the 787. If you’re the CEO of Boeing and you can only do one big program every 15 years, why do you want to build a supersonic plane? It’s only going to undermine the business case for the airplanes that are your cash cows.” Boom’s gamble is that all the technological advancements since Concorde—in materials, computer-assisted design, engines, fuel—won’t simply make it Concorde redux. “Concorde was a very strong technological advancement,” says Boom’s senior vice president Brian Durrence. “But it was focused on speed, and speed at all costs.” For much of its seven-year life, Boom has been running iterations through simulated wind tunnels. “There’s not a straight line on this aircraft,” Scholl says. The art of designing a supersonic jet, he says, is that it’s really two planes in one: fast and efficient like a bullet, but safe and stable for slower speeds and landing. Adding to the complexity, Durrence tells me that the “high transonic phase”—that moment of moving from subsonic to supersonic—is one of the most challenging environments to design for. After endless virtual testing, resulting in changes to the wing contour and the fuselage that Scholl says “aren’t really visible to the human eye,” Boom thinks it is ready. “We feel very calibrated.” Learning how to build the plane, Scholl says, wasn’t the hard part. “It was learning how to tell the story, finding the right people, building the right culture.” He’s enlisted people like Durrence, a longtime executive at Gulfstream Aerospace, to take up the quest. “I started looking at the amount of runway in front of me,” Durrence says, “and I knew I probably only had one more big aircraft program in me. I really wanted to do something special.” Boom has also partnered with Rolls-Royce, engine supplier for the Concorde. Simon Carlisle, the company’s director of strategy for civil aerospace, praises Boom’s vision and says for a startup to get to the point where it has a demonstrator aircraft to fly represents a “huge achievement.” Reading about supersonic aviation, it’s not uncommon to come across the lament that in the entire history of the passenger jet, average speeds have barely changed (with the footnoted exception of Concorde, of course). It’s not as if jets can’t go faster. Durrence notes that it’s not uncommon for small jets to go supersonic during testing—“just to hit the required points for certification.” Why, I ask Scholl, can’t we simply aim to have commercial jets fly just under the speed of sound, avoiding the boom and still gaining a time advantage? “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze,” he says. One reason, he suggests, is scheduling. Of the roughly six-hour New York to London route, “it’s long enough that people want to fly it overnight as a red eye and sleep on it,” he says. “If you shrink that flight by a little bit, you’ve actually made it worse.” You need a big leap forward, not a little one. But a more overriding issue is fuel consumption. Richard Aboulafia, an aviation consultant with Teal Group, notes that while speeds may not have budged much over the more than half-century of jet transport, “the fuel burn has gone down by 70 per cent.” Boom says it will use sustainable airline fuel—the novel biomass-derived source currently used on less than one percent of commercial flights in the world—but, no matter what, it will be using more of it than it would if it were flying slower (by some five to seven times, according to an estimate from the International Council on Clean Transportation). The addition of internet connectivity to planes has, argues Aboulafia, changed the meaning of time (and that’s assuming, in this Zoom-driven pandemic age, you’re even flying to begin with). “In Concorde’s day,” he says, “you were a prisoner”—albeit one being fed terrine de foie gras and Château Gruaud Larose Bordeaux. “You got off the plane and went straight to a phone and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’” Now, you can be connected throughout. “You have a wonderful office in the sky, and they’re serving you delicious meals”—at least at the front of the plane. “Why are you rushing?” The sentiment is not unfamiliar. When I rode the inaugural Newark to Singapore route, then the longest flight in the world, on Singapore Air—in business class—I caught up on films I hadn’t seen, ate Singapore noodles, slept and ate again. I was only dimly aware of the passage of time, certainly not enough to pay a premium to go faster. Which raises the question of how many people would. “Perhaps my greatest frustration is that everyone says Concorde was killed by regulations and the sonic boom,” Aboulafia says. “No, Concorde was killed because there weren’t enough people willing to pay $12,000 roundtrip.” Scholl counters that time spent on an airplane is a tangible source of consumer pain: “You don’t see any evidence in the market today that people like time on airplanes.” When a direct route is introduced to a market that was previously only served by a connecting flight, fares go up and passenger volumes go up. He does recognize that Concorde, for all its associated glamour, was, as a pure passenger experience, less than optimal. “You’ve got this bird that looks like it’s from the future, but you step on board and your first impression is that this is cramped.” To that end, Boom has enlisted the prominent design firm IDEO to create Overture’s interiors. “We’re doing things like taking the overhead bins out of the airplane,” Scholl says, “so the whole cabin feels more spacious.” The goal, he says, “is that when you leave the airplane, you should feel better than when you got on.” It’s an admittedly enticing thought: arriving somewhere earlier than when you set out, a sort of temporal and metaphysical reset. AS ITS COMPANY name would indicate, the airplanes of Boom, should they ever take to the skies, will produce the eponymous sound associated with the displacement of air-pressure waves—not just when they go supersonic, but along the continuity of their supersonic flight path—greatly constraining where they can fly. Scholl says that overland, Boom will fly 20 percent faster than current jets—just under the boom threshold. What if they produced no boom, or, more plausibly, a sound that was more akin to the soft closing of a car door? This is the premise of NASA’s X-59 QueSST, a single-seat demonstrator plane currently being built at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. As Peter Coen, a mission manager with the program, describes it, it is the culmination of decades’ worth of research, largely theoretical and dating back to the 1950s, oriented around the idea of changing the nature of the sonic boom and thus its aural signature. It’s not so much noise-canceling, he explains, in which headsets create a kind of anti-sound, as it is shifting the shape of the wave that produces the sound. “If you’re quiet enough,” he says, “you can fly overland supersonic.” As Air and Space notes, where the Concorde’s supersonic waves exerted an average of 10 kg per square meter of atmospheric overpressure on the human eardrum, the X-59 comes in at a mere 1.4. In 2018, NASA carried out two weeks of tests in which F/A-18 Hornet jets, carrying large speakers, flew over Galveston, Texas, producing a simulacrum of what an actual X-59 might sound like. “Nobody’s done a community test for supersonic overflight sound since the 1960s,” Coen says. Some Galvestonians compared the flight noise to a dustbin lorry, others to distant thunder, others said they heard nothing—reinforcing the point that while the physics of sound are a constant, human perception of sound is not. The plane, after being assembled in Palmdale, is scheduled to be shipped to Fort Worth for structural testing in late 2021; after that, Coen says, it will go back to Palmdale for “final system checkouts.” The first flight tests will happen in 2024, with data from community tests to be sent to the Federal Aviation Administration by 2027. “NASA is not building an airplane,” notes Coen. “We are building a technology solution and something that can contribute to research, trying to understand what it would take to fully open up the market by enabling supersonic travel over land.” Boom, of course, isn’t waiting for that moment. Back in the hangar, Scholl is talking about the XB-1 as more than a massively instrumented, super sleek assemblage of carbon fiber, but as a vital proof of concept. “There’s two places in the world you can see a civil supersonic airplane: a museum, and right here,” he says. That he treats this as-yet-unrealized ambition as a fait accompli either reflects unfettered optimism and gritty determination, an Icarus-like entrepreneurial hubris, or some measure of both. https://www.wired.com/story/boom-supersonic-planes/ SpaceX launches 52 Starlink satellites from California base VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. — A SpaceX rocket carried 52 Starlink internet satellites into orbit from California early Saturday. The U.S. military has become increasingly interested in using satellite imagery to extend its situational awareness and beyond line-of-sight targeting, partly because of the emergence of low-latency networks, like Starlink, which would make it possible to get data from anywhere in the world to a soldier or weapon system faster than ever. The American firm also was scheduled to launch a Turkish communications satellite from Florida at 10:58 p.m. EST on Saturday. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Space Force Base at 4:41 a.m. and arced over the Pacific Ocean. The Falcon’s first stage returned and landed on a SpaceX droneship in the ocean. It was the 11th launch and recovery of the stage. The second stage continued into orbit and deployment of the satellites was confirmed, said launch commentator Youmei Zhou at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Starlink is a satellite-based global internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world. Saturday’s mission was the 34th launch for Starlink, a constellation of nearly 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit. https://www.defensenews.com/space/2021/12/20/spacex-launches-52-starlink-satellites-from-california-base/ Curt Lewis