Airborne: Reborn / Volume XV / October 14th 2020
In the fifteenth weekly edition of Airborne: Reborn Volocopter’s CCO shows us around the German company’s multicopter, Brian Garret-Glaser scoops footage of a Rolls-Royce eVTOL test via Reddit and ‘The Woracle’ succinctly summarises the world’s most promising electric aircraft projects for Aviation Week.
Meanwhile test flights continue apace around the globe - from hybrid-electric fixed-wing exploits in France to a pseudo-satellite lingering in the stratosphere over New Mexico to relay video calls to Tokyo. Drones closer to the ground drop packages into wheeled robots in Korea, fly from freshly-funded electric vans in Ohio and have fancy new Italian tech to determine their altitude.
In London Seraphim’s ‘Space Camp’ selects a raft of new startups whilst a Californian company becomes the latest to embrace going public via SPAC. There’s a profile of Singapore’s commercial space sector, a plea on orbital space debris from Peter Beck and a small step forward together for (some of) humanity as eight nations sign NASA’s Artemis Accords.
Volocopter shared a video tour of their VoloCity aircraft by CCO Christian Bauer which includes a peek at the aircraft’s swappable battery packs. The company also revealed the findings of a project with ADAC Luftrettung looking at emergency response applications of eVTOL aircraft (full report pdf). It concluded that multicopters (like VoloCity) could transport emergency doctors to rural locations more quickly than road vehicles. Whilst they can’t compete with the patient-carrying payload capabilities nor range of helicopters (at present), they could free up capacity by performing transport duties. Some 60% of the time emergency helicopters in the research area were simply being used to transport first responders (via Volocopter):
A Rolls-Royce tilt-wing eVTOL aircraft was filmed undergoing a ground test at Cranfield Airport in the UK (via Brian Garrett-Glaser for eVTOL.com / tyw7on on r/aerospace):
EASA’s virtual Rotorcraft and VTOL Symposium 2020 takes place on November 12th (via EASA).
Nikhil Goel, co-author of the 2016 Uber Elevate whitepaper that kick-started the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) industry announced that he was leaving Uber to build “something new” (via Nikhil Goel).
France’s VoltAero announced that the hybrid-electric power module for the production version of their Cassio 1 aircraft had begun flight testing. The pusher-prop, fixed-wing aircraft will have a range of up to 1,200km, cruise at 200 knots and accommodate four to 10 passengers. It’s powered by a combination of three 60kW electric motors and a 370hp combustion engine. A public flight demonstration is scheduled for October 21st (via VoltAero):
Graham Warwick of Aviation Week published ‘2020: An Electrifying Year’ featuring electric flight projects from; Ampaire, Bye Aerospace, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, DLR, Eviation, Harbour Air, MagniX, AeroTEC, Pipistrel, NASA / ESAero, Universal Hydrogen, VoltAero, ZeroAvia (via Aviation Week / The Woracle).
Ohio-based electric vehicle specialists Workhorse (Nasdaq: WKHS) - who have been testing delivery vans with integrated HorseFly drones - announced a $200m round of convertible note financing from two institutional investors (via WCPO).
Some new details of the EU-funded ICARUS (Integrated Common Altitude Reference System for U-space) programme were shared. The EU Horizon 2020 / SESAR backed initiative uses technology from Italy’s TopView and Poland’s DroneRadar to calculate a reliable common reference altitude for drones operating at very low altitude. Converting between geodetic GNSS (including from the EU’s Galileo constellation) and barometric QNH/QFE and using digital terrain models, the system will also be offered to general aviation users via VHF (via Alberto Mennella):
The UK’s only space accelerator - Seraphim Capital’s Space Camp - unveiled their latest cohort of startups - 4pi Lab, Clutch Space Systems, Helix Technologies, Kinnami, Starfish Space, Sust Global and Vector Photonics (via Jeff Crusey / TechCrunch).
Space agencies from Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom joined NASA in signing The Artemis Accords, which the US hopes will pave the way for safe and peaceful exploration of the moon, and beyond (via NASA).
Stable Road Capital announced that they’ll take Californian space infrastructure company Momentus Inc public through their Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) Stable Road Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ: SRAC, SRACU, SRACW). The company’s first Vigoride transport and service vehicle - powered by water plasma propulsion - is scheduled to launch Dec ‘20 (via J. Brant Arseneau):
CNA Insider published an insightful piece on the emergence of Singapore’s growing cluster of commercial space companies, reported to have grabbed a 7% share of global investments in the sector. Airbus Ventures, who recently attracted significant Japanese investment in their third fund, are expected to launch an upcoming investment in the territory’s “emerging deep space capabilities”. (via Yuichiro Hikosaka / Channel News Asia):
Orbital space debris and congestion, in part fuelled by satellite mega-constellations, is already making it more of a challenge than ever for rockets to find a clear path to “weave their way up” into orbit, according to RocketLab CEO Peter Beck (via Jackie Wattles / CNN).
Finland’s ICEYE released a public archive of 18,000 images captured by their Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite constellation, free for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons licence, and downloadable in both KMZ (for use in Google Earth Pro) and GeoJSON format (via ICEYE).
HAPSMobile’s solar-powered High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS) Sunglider aircraft cruised in the stratosphere for over five hours on a test flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico, successfully relaying an LTE Band28 signal - reported to be a world first for a fixed-wing autonomous aircraft. A video call with participants in New Mexico and Tokyo was successfully routed through the aircraft. Loon (backed by Alphabet) and HAPSMobile (backed by Softbank) announced in April ‘19 that they’d collaborate on adapting the communications payload used on the Google spinout’s high-altitude balloons, to work on the 78m wide ‘Sunglider’. The work included development of an aerodynamic housing to protect a rotating antenna. HAPSMobile is led by CEO & President Junichi Miyakawa, who is also CTO of Softbank (via The Verge):
South Korea’s second largest refiner GS Caltex held a demonstration on Jangdo Island that showed a customer placing an order from a convenience store and taking delivery about 10 minutes later. A multicopter drone flew autonomously (incl. a 900m stretch over water) and delivered a package from a Caltex fuel station to a waiting autonomous delivery robot, which in turn drove another 700m to the final destination. The company envisages turning its network of filling stations into drone delivery logistics hubs (via The Korea Bizwire):
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