NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle heat shield candidate materials have just been tested under intense heat conditions, to see how they would hold up during Orion’s return and re-entry from a lunar mission. Philip Lorenz III reports that NASA engineers who specialize in arc heater testing teamed with the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee to modify the center’s High Enthalpy Aerothermal H2 test facility to accommodate the testing.
RTX, parent of Raytheon, Collins and Pratt & Whitney, is getting out of the space prime business and focusing on its "strengths" as a maker of space sensors, buses, and components, company COO Chris Calio said during an earnings call.