On April 19, NASA announced that the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter achieved a successful first test flight from the surface of Mars — making it the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. In its initial autonomous flight, the helicopter achieved a maximum altitude of 10 ft (3 m) and […]
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Each Mars mission is part of a continuing chain of innovation, relying on past missions for proven technologies and contributing its own technical developments to future missions. As with previous missions, aluminum […]
Lockheed Martin completed building the capsule for NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis missions to the Moon and then Mars. The crew module capsule for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the Moon has been stacked on top of the Orion service module, which was also recently finished. The ceremony for the completion was held in […]
By Andrea Svendsen, Managing Editor. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission culminated in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on the Moon — a mission decades in the making and which effectively ended the Space Race. Getting to the Moon required the development of new advanced technologies under Project […]
By Michael Niedzinski, Constellium. During the past 60 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) charted the western world’s course for the exploration of outer space. NASA managed and funded programs such as Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the International Space Station, which is supported by Space Shuttle missions and more recently by the Space […]
The Parker Solar Probe, launched on August 12, 2018, began a journey that will bring it closer to the sun than any mission before. The probe carries sensors and instruments that will enable unprecedented, close-up observations of the Sun’s corona and solar wind, which will address unsolved scientific questions, as well as making contributions to […]
The December 2014 issue of Light Metal Age is now available. The digital edition has been released to subscribers and the print edition will be shipped next week. The cover features as-rolled aluminum foil produced by Hydro’s Grevenbroich rolling mill in Germany. The foil is only 15 μm thick but completely free from grease. […]
