When is an empty tube not an empty tube? When it’s a ramjet that uses rotating detonation technology to propel aircraft at hypersonic speeds. A case in point is Venus Aerospace’s new Venus Detonation Ramjet 2000 lb Thrust Engine (VDR2).

One of the biggest hurdles that need to be cleared in making hypersonic flight practical is building engines that are capable of sustained thrust.

Currently, hypersonic systems are mainly based on glide bodies that are boosted to high speed and altitude by rockets and then accelerate to over Mach 5 by gliding back to lower altitudes. However, if you want to build airliners that can fly from San Francisco to Tokyo in one hour, you need something more like a jet engine.

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NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for Europa Clipper, the agency’s mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. NASA is targeting launch at 12:31 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 10, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the solar system’s most promising potentially habitable environments. After an approximately 1.8-billion-mile journey, Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030, where the spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Europa to determine whether the icy world could have conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. It carries a suite of nine instruments along with a gravity experiment that will investigate an ocean beneath Europa’s surface, which scientists believe contains twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans.

New Horizons mission continues to surprise scientists.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission run by the European Space Agency (ESA) has taken the sharpest images ever produced of the Earth’s radiation belt. JUICE has a long mission ahead of it. Launched in April 2023, the spacecraft has to make several gravitational assists before it reaches its target of Jupiter and three of its largest moons…

Working towards the achievement of interstellar flight through knowledge to the stars — Starships in our lifetime.

NASA and KASA will work together on a mission to an unexplored region of space.

University of Florida horticulture science professor Rob Ferl is going where some men have gone before, including William Shatner and Jeff Bezos, but he’s bringing along some experimental plant life for NASA.

Ferl, a researcher within UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, is also the director of UF’s new Astraeus Space Institute. He is joining five other people on the launch of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket today for what will be its eighth human spaceflight. Dubbed NS-26, the capsule is set for liftoff as early as 9:00 a.m. EDT from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility.

Along for the ride will be a species of plant called Arabidopsis thaliana. Ferl will be looking at how its genes adapt on the way to space.

Ispace’s Mission 2 will launch no earlier than December on a Falcon 9 rocket.