Aerospace and Defense Review : News

Bringing the series to a close, Thales, a primary air traffic management system that governs 40 percent of the world's airspace and a global technology leader with operations in more than 68 countries, is raising money alongside Altos Ventures. Airspace Link, North America's Largest supplier of solutions that enable the FAA, state, and local governments to efficiently manage the safe incorporation of drones into their communities, has raised $10 Million in a Series A round of financing from Altos Ventures. Altos Ventures, situated in the Bay Area, is an early-stage investor with a global focus on consumer and enterprise firms founded in 1996. Altos currently handles over 10 billion dollars in administrative assets across more than 100 enterprises.  "We're excited to partner with the Airspace Link team to help them build the digital infrastructure for safe drone flights domestically and around the globe," said Dillon Krasnigor from Altos Ventures. "We were impressed with the Airspace team's deep domain expertise and their vision of how unmanned drones will be used over the next decade and beyond. We believe the company will be a key player in making mass unmanned drone flights a reality." "Airspace Link acts like the Google Maps (Waze) for drones, but the roads, rules and regulations are not in place yet." Bringing the series to a close, Thales, a primary air traffic management system that governs 40 percent of the world's airspace and a global technology leader with operations in more than 68 countries, is raising money alongside Altos Ventures. Thales is the world's ninth-largest defense contractor, with revenues of 18.5 billion euros (EUR) in 2020. "As Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) usage continues to grow, for safe, low altitude operations around communities, airspace management must combine both air and ground insights," said Todd Donovan, Thales Vice President, Airspace Mobility Solutions Americas. "Our deep knowledge of airspace management and Airspace Link's expertise in geospatial intelligence are the perfect combination to address this complex challenge." Indicator Ventures, 2048 Enterprises, Ludlow Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Techstars, and Dan Gilbert's Detroit Venture Partners were all investors in Airspace Link before this 2021 fundraising (DVP). "Airspace Link acts like the Google Maps (Waze) for drones, but the roads, rules and regulations are not in place yet," CEO Michael Helander said. The Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability platform from Airspace Link is an FAA-approved transportation planning tool for integrating drones into the national airspace and our communities. State government transportation groups use the platform to plan, create, administer, and engage the drone community. This month, Airspace Link participated in Ohio's first multi-modal transportation demonstration involving ground and autonomous air vehicles. The mission that VyrtX, a logistics software vendor, led, and JobsOhio, involved delivering blood tubes, vessels, and tissues via a small drone system that met up with a massive autonomous helicopter at KOSU airport. Which then transported the first 3-D printed kidney on a perfusion device to KMRT airport in Marysville, Ohio. The AirHub solution from Airspace Link provided the digital infrastructure to assure the operation's safety by simplifying permission for the on-airport portion of UAS operation and calculating the safest route for the lengthier leg of the transfer to KMRT. Airspace Link's digital infrastructure technologies are being integrated into other innovative UAS systems around the United States to allow the UAS sector to scale securely. Along with founding members Ana Healander and Daniel Bradshaw, Michael Helander has grown the Detroit-based team to 20 full-time employees in the last year and has established partnerships across over forty government agencies and municipalities across the United States to implement Airspace Link's AirHub drone infrastructure platform. "Our core purpose is to safely integrate drones into the national airspace and our communities at scale," said Helander. "We thank Altos Ventures and Thales for joining our vision of paving the way for the drone economy with shared, neutral and affordable UAS infrastructure." ...Read more

ZeroAvia's 19-seat R&D is part of HyFlyer II, the second ZeroAvia-led project backed by the UK Government to target the development of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain. To continue the company's trajectory toward zero-emission flight, ZeroAvia is ramping up its 19-seat aircraft program to decarbonize and revolutionize regional air travel. The company will utilize two twin-engine 19-seat Dornier 228 aircraft - one in the UK and one in the US, provided respectively by Aurigny and AMC Aviation. Both aircraft were previously in service for regional flights in the US and UK, demonstrating the opportunity for carbon reduction on existing routes. As part of HyFlyer I, ZeroAvia successfully demonstrated a 250kW powerplant in a 6-seat aircraft across three flight test campaigns, achieving all the project's technical goals, including fuel-cell-only cruise flight. All the learnings of HyFlyer I will be fully utilized in the development of a 600kW 19-seater powerplant in HyFlyer II. ZeroAvia has also secured an additional $13 million for its 50+ seat engine development program from AP Ventures, a significant investor in breakthrough technologies across the hydrogen value chain, Alumni Ventures Group, SGH Capital, Agartha Fund LP, and existing investors Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Summa Equity, Shell Ventures, SYSTEMIQ, and Horizons Ventures. This new funding complements the initial investment of $24 million the company announced a few weeks ago, bringing the total private investment into ZeroAvia large engine development for 50+ seat aircraft to $37 million. "We are eager and ready to begin testing our hydrogen-electric powertrain technology on a larger commercial-size aircraft and grateful to our investors and grant funders for their continued support of our vision for sustainable aviation," said Val Miftakhov, Founder and CEO at ZeroAvia. "Various projections indicate that aviation may account for over 25 percent of human-induced climate effects by 2050. We are on the path to helping reverse that trend, first with our successful 6-seater testing and now with the R&D for our 19-seater, and the kick-off of our 50+ seat program. Hydrogen is the only practical solution for true climate-neutral flight, and it will become a commercial reality much sooner than many predict." For the 19-seat aircraft, two 600KW units of the company's hydrogen-electric powertrain will replace the aircraft's twin engines, along with hydrogen fuel tanks eventually holding 100kg of compressed gaseous hydrogen to support the 500-mile range of the commercial offering in 2024. Additionally, ZeroAvia is progressing the software, hardware, mechanical integration, and fuel cell balance-of-plant to the certifiable state. The 6-ton aircraft will have a range of 500 nautical miles. ZeroAvia's new 30,000-square foot Kemble facility will act as the dedicated base for developing ZeroAvia's 600kW engine class and marks a significant investment in and expansion of its UK-based R&D program. The company's Hollister, California location will assist the UK team with testing and will be responsible for building the second demonstration aircraft for commercialization of technology in North America. ZeroAvia has also made several key additions to its team, including its new CTO of Propulsion, Dr. Youcef Abdelli, formerly Head of Electrical System and Power Electronics at magniX and Principal Electrical & Propulsion System Chief Engineer for Amazon Prime Air. Also joining the team is new Regulatory & Safety Advisor Sir Tim Anderson, a former Senior Royal Air Force Officer, inaugural Director-General of the UK Military Aviation Authority, Chief Operating Officer of Flybe Group, and Chairman of the UK Airspace Change Organising Group Steering Committee. Finally, Kenneth Braithwaite, the 77th Secretary of the Navy, a retired US Navy Admiral, and a Senior Advisor to Summa Equity and Silicon Valley Bank, will be signing on as a board observer. ...Read more

NASA partners with industry, academia, and other government agencies through its Sustainable Flight National Partnership to accomplish an aggressive climate change agenda for aviation. The partnership seeks to reduce aviation carbon emissions by 2050 compared to their 2005 level and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 Cleaner-burning jet fuels made from sustainable sources can produce 50 percent-70 percent fewer ice crystal contrails at cruising altitude, reducing aviation's impact on the environment, according to research conducted by NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Ice crystal contrail formations can linger in the upper atmosphere for hours and affect the way Earth is heated and cooled. They produce localized increases in temperature – which over time impacts climate change. [vendor_logo_first] "We know that contrail formation from jet exhaust has a larger, more immediate impact on climate than carbon dioxide emissions," said Richard Moore, a NASA scientist at Langley Research Center in Virginia. "This research shows we have an opportunity using alternative fuels to make immediate changes that could help the planet." The research was published in the Nature research journal Communications Earth & Environment. Moore was one of 29 contributors to the paper. Christiane Voigt, head of the Cloud Physics Department within the DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics, served as lead author. Jet engine exhaust includes water vapor and soot particles. As the water vapor cools, it condenses. Ice crystals form when that supercooled water interacts with either exhaust soot or particles naturally present in the air. By using alternative fuel, jet engines release fewer soot particles, resulting in fewer ice crystal formations. The crystals that do form are larger, but that does not create a problem because they fall more quickly and melt in the warmer air below. "While computer models have shown that contrail ice crystal numbers should vary proportionally with aircraft engine exhaust particle emissions, it's been really hard to observationally make this link," Moore said. That changed in 2018 when NASA and DLR conducted a joint flight research campaign. Known as Emission and Climate Impact of Alternative Fuel experiment by DLR and ND-MAX ("N" for NASA, "D" for DLR, and MAX for maximum research opportunity) by NASA, the campaign was staged from Ramstein Air Base southwest of Frankfurt, Germany. The international collaboration saw the DLR's Advanced Technology Research Aircraft A320 airliner burning alternative biofuels while NASA's DC-8 "Flying Laboratory" trailed a safe distance behind, sampling and analyzing gases and particles in the German aircraft's wake. The experiment was the latest step in a series of research campaigns, some in the United States and some in Germany, that used different aircraft, flight conditions, and sampling techniques to build a knowledge base about alternative fuels. NASA led previous research flight programs over California called Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions (ACCESS I and II) in 2013 and 2014. During these campaigns, NASA's DC-8 burned the alternate fuels, while smaller, business-class jets, such as the NASA Falcon HU-25 and DLR Falcon 20, flew behind to gather data. Those flights showed that using a blend of half biofuel and half regular fuel reduced soot emissions by as much as 50 percent-70 percent. Researchers had intended to study contrail research as part of the ACCESS campaigns, but atmospheric conditions prevented contrail formation. The more recent tests over Germany allowed researchers to gather the data they needed. "The exciting thing about this new paper is that all of the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place: We had the sustainable aviation fuel blends, the world-class DLR ATRA and NASA DC-8 research aircraft, and favorable meteorology for forming persistent contrails," Moore said. See also:   Top Field Service Companies ...Read more