Aerospace

Rising fuel costs, environmental regulations and an increase in airline traffic have helped drive the increasing use of composite materials in the aerospace industry. Composites are used in military, business and commercial aircraft of all sizes, including spacecraft.

Innovative Spacesuit Prototype Uses Composites to Help Detect Damage

Teijin Aramid’s Twaron® is being used by the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) to develop a prototype spacesuit layer with a damage-detection system. The space industry must deal...

Commercial Orbital Rocket Relying on Carbon Fiber and Aluminum Composites to Soar

Orbex is building Prime, a commercial orbital rocket, of an optimized blend of lightweight carbon-fiber and aluminum composites, making the rocket up to 30 percent lighter than other rockets of its...

NASA Helping Fund Project to Speed Design of Composite Deployable Structures

AnalySwift LLC has received a grant from NASA to be used to further develop its SwiftComp software, a technology that provides efficient, high-fidelity modeling of deployable structures made of high-strain...

Apollo IE Hyper-Car Uses Carbon Fiber for Strength and Aerodynamics

The IE in Apollo IE stands for Intensa Emozione, meaning intense emotion, and the hyper-car was designed with high-functionality and radical style in mind. Apollo IE was developed in partnership with HWA AG,...

Composite Aeroshell Will Protect NASA’s 2020 Rover Throughout Journey to Mars

Lockheed Martin developed a heat shield using a tiled Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) thermal protection system to protect the Mars 2020 rover from the intense heat during entry, descent, and...

FSU Team Develops Carbon Nanotube Heat Shield for Superfast Aircraft

A team of Florida A&M University - Florida State University (FSU) College of Engineering researchers from FSU’s High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) is developing a design for a heat shield made...