Aerospace and Defense Review : News

The European space programme will see a 17 per cent increase in funding to €16.9bn after a key meeting in Paris. After a crucial meeting in Paris, the European space programme will receive a 17 per cent increase in funding, approximating €16.9 billion. In addition to a ScaleUp programme for space technology startups, the boost will result in the development of a new lunar lander, a new reusable rocket, a worldwide digital twin, and a new mission to Mars for the Rosalind Franklin rover. The independent access to space for Europe is essential for applications like tracking the effects of climate change, and securing communications, and navigation, according to the ESA Council at the ministerial level. This also includes initiatives to use satellites in orbit to beam power back to the earth. A new ESA programme named ScaleUp will assist space commercialisation and the creation of a new space ecosystem in Europe with an increase in the technology budget to €542 million. Through the development, making, and flying components of its general support technology programme, the European Space Agency (ESA) will collaborate with European space companies to advance new technologies to the point where they are prepared for space and the open market. By offering business incubation, business acceleration, intellectual property and technology transfer services to new companies through its ScaleUp programme, the Agency will also work to establish Europe as a hub for space commercialisation. This will be done while ensuring that business ideas scale up in new markets and draw both private and institutional investors. The ESA Council at the Ministerial Level was presided over by Robert Habeck, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in the German government. We secured another step to improve Europe's space infrastructure in the ESA Council at the Ministerial level, together with all the Ministers from the ESA Member States. Council gave the green light to a significant group of initiatives that safeguard their orbits, motivate youth, provide chances for both big and small businesses to flourish in Europe and enhance our standing as a talent-attractive high-tech region. They can ensure that Europe maintains its position as a global leader in research, technology, and sustainability by working together, especially in trying times. Ministers approved €2.7 billion for ESA's Earth observation programme, which will support the Copernicus, Aeolus-2, and InCubed-2 observation programmes and future ESA's Earth science, research, and development initiative. Additionally, it will use cloud computing, high-performance computing, or artificial intelligence to create a digital twin Earth model. The meeting approved two ambitious missions: MAGIC, a gravity mission that will measure the volume of water in oceans, ice sheets, and glaciers to better understand sea level change and to improvise for it, and Harmony, the next ESA Earth Explorer, which promises to provide novel data to address fundamental questions about the ocean, ice, and land dynamics, which have a direct impact on risk monitoring, water and energy resources, food security, and climate change. ...Read more

After two years of instability, the aviation industry looks set for a decade of development. Two years of turbulence have prepared the aviation industry for a decade of growth. Unlike the current decade, which has seen stable annual demand growth, the next decade will likely present numerous obstacles that will test the industry's endurance. Despite excellent immunizations, COVID-19 continues to plague the airline and aerospace industries, as well as the world economy as a whole. While a substantial chunk of domestic air travel demand worldwide has rebounded and the fleet is again expanding, the unpredictability of COVID-19 and its variants remains the industry's greatest impediment to business as usual. The rapid spread of Omicron at the end of 2021 caused many problems for the industry, including absenteeism in the workforce, government travel restrictions, and supply chain disruptions, to mention a few. Nonetheless, as the aviation sector enters 2022, there is cautious hope that the industry has shifted the corner and is again on an upward trajectory, thanks to universal vaccination, government support, and pent-up demand for travel—at least in developed economies. By early 2023, the global demand for domestic travel will surpass its 2019 pre-pandemic peak. The prognosis for the remainder of the decade is for sustained growth at rates exceeding the gross domestic product increase. Globally, the business and international travel sectors will recover more slowly due to corporate and government policies likely to be entirely eased once COVID-19 becomes a pandemic. However, there were other factors besides constraints that diminished corporate travel. Videoconferencing and the growing realization that people may conduct business remotely have had an impact. In the near future, the sluggish recovery of business travel will likely limit airline profitability and expansion, but there is the possibility of a decline in long-term corporate demand. The greatest barrier to international travel has been and will continue to be the difference between cross-border regulations and immunization coverage. A gradual recovery in this market segment will limit the fleet size of wide-body aircraft for years. It is likely that the global fleet will reach its January 2020 peak of about 28,000 by the first half of 2023, which was the same size at the beginning of 2022 as in 2017. There will be 38,100 aircraft in the fleet by 2032, representing a compound annual growth rate of 4.1 percent. As international travel returns later, most of the fleet recovery will consist of narrowbody aircraft, which will make up around 64 percent of the fleet by January 2032, up from 58 percent in January 2020. While it is anticipated that narrowbodies will return to pre-pandemic levels by mid-year, most of the rise will first result from aircraft being removed from storage or the delivery of aircraft from manufacturers' inventories. The aviation sector was already suffering from the worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX in 2019; more than 400 of these aircraft were manufactured but had not been delivered by 2020 when COVID-19 struck. Contrary to most of the fleet, cargo is experiencing an increase. During the pandemic, the expansion of the cargo fleet was necessitated by a 17 percent increase in shipments in 2021 over 2019, resulting in part from COVID-related online purchasing. Cargo aircraft increased by 3 percent in 2021, and passenger aircraft were converted to freight. A fleet in transition is redefining the MRO industry market, partly due to increased aircraft retirements entering a time of intensive MRO expenses. Demand for MRO should recover to pre-COVID levels by 2024, although the second half of our 10-year prediction period will experience an annual increase of 2.8 percent. By 2030, demand for MRO will reach $118 billion, 13 percent less than the pre-COVID prediction of $135 billion. The weaker growth forecasts will only be applicable in some places in the world. By the end of 2021, the active China-based fleet and its MRO demand had already surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Other regions, such as Western Europe, will experience a recovery in MRO demand in 2025. Another factor that will affect the MRO environment is a possible push toward onshoring capacity—a direct response to COVID-19's unanticipated quarantining of some assets and its ongoing disruption of supply chains. While a portion of the push will wane as COVID-19 fades, airlines and aerospace manufacturers need a sizeable capacity that trade conflicts or unforeseen travel restrictions cannot eliminate. This translates to housekeeping service providers. ...Read more

RSN and SpeQtral are working together to demonstrate how adding a QKD encryption layer over a constellation of low earth orbit satellites can enhance communication security. "We are delighted to work with international partners to employ SpeQtral-1 for the demonstration of ultra-secure communications, executing on our vision to realise global QKD. We have had strong synergies with our partners thus far and are excited to bring our technology one step closer to enabling telecommunication network providers to incorporate a valued-added quantum security feature to their offering," states Chune Yang Lum, Co-founder and CEO of SpeQtral. Check Out This : Gov Business Review  In a partnership agreement with SpeQtral, Rivera Space Networks GmbH, a global network company, is planning to send 600 low-earth orbit satellites (LEO) to provide secure, global connectivity to governments and businesses. Increasingly data-driven, cloud-based, and cybersecurity-conscious networks transporting data worldwide need to be upgraded. In light of recent geopolitical and cybersecurity threats, we are increasingly turning to new low-earth orbit constellations and fundamentally different networking architectures for connectivity that meets today's security, latency, throughput, reach, and mobility requirements. In developing highly secure, satellite-enabled connectivity networks, quantum-secure communications systems, and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology play an essential role. Encryption keys are distributed using quantum entanglement in QKD. With SpeQtral's QKD platform, you can create and distribute computation-uncrackable encryption keys using physics instead of algorithms. Severin Meister, CEO of RIvada Space Networks GmbH, added: "Recent events in Ukraine have demonstrated that we are increasingly reliant on the commercial satellite sector and, in particular, new satellite constellations to provide high-performance, resilient communications infrastructure. Security is a key attribute of Rivada's unique gateway-less architecture, and we believe leveraging quantum technology will enable us to deploy the most secure communications network in the world. Meister continued: "Trialing this innovative new technology here in Germany is extremely important for us as we recently joined the EU's multi-stakeholder Secure Connectivity Programme, and we are excited to add quantum encryption capability to the provision of an independent and secure communications infrastructure for Europe." A QKD encryption layer is added to low earth orbit satellite constellations by Rivada Space Networks (RSN) and SpeQtral to enhance communications security. RSN will send four precursor satellites in 2024. The partnership will enable RSN and SpeQtral to establish quantum-encrypted data links over RSN precursor satellites and validate the space and ground station terminals required to facilitate secure encrypted traffic over Rivada Space Networks. ...Read more