The first mid-air hookup of an airplane to an airship takes place over Langley Field, Va., as a pilot flying a Sperry M-1 Messenger, with its top-wing mounted trapeze, hooks on to a rig suspended below the Goodyear D-3 airship and shuts the engine down. The Messenger, the smallest aircraft ever built for the Army, is intended as a “dispatch rider of the sky,” relaying messages between field commanders. This test is one of several experimental tasks the aircraft would be used to accomplish.
Satellite manufacturer Apex announced it would launch a space-based interceptor demonstration next summer—the latest company to unveil plans to prototype technology that could contribute to the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense project.
