Jane Edwards

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has said the company thinks it has “gotten to the bottom of the problem” that resulted in the explosion of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket in September. “It involves a combination of liquid helium, advanced carbon fiber composites, and solid oxygen… Oxygen so cold that it actually enters solid phase,” Musk […] More

Engineers have completed the first “Center of Curvature” test on the primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in order to measure the shape of the mirror before the telescope goes through a series of launch environment tests. NASA engineers collaborated with technicians from Ball Aerospace & Technologies and the Space Telescope Science Institute to conduct […] More

The Defense Department and Lockheed Martin have developed cost-tracking software related to the procurement of F-35 lot 3 aircraft through the FlexFile program, DoD News reported Wednesday. Jim Garamone writes DoD’s cost assessment and program evaluation office developed the FlexFile program in an effort to help DoD estimators facilitate collection of data from contractors and […] More

The U.S. Navy will conduct developmental and operational tests of seven Lockheed Martin-built F-35B Lightning II aircraft aboard an amphibious assault ship. Five of the seven F-35B short take-off and vertical-landing variant are scheduled to enter the operational testing phase onboard the USS America (LHA-6) vessel while the remaining two fighter jets will begin the third phase of the shipboard […] More