Too many airplane systems rely on too few sensors

The apparent connection between fatal airplane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia centers around the failure of a single sensor. I know what that's like: A few years ago, while I was flying a Cessna 182-RG from Albany, New ...

NASA's Mars helicopter completes flight tests

Since the Wright brothers first took to the skies of Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina, Dec. 17, 1903, first flights have been important milestones in the life of any vehicle designed for air travel. After all, it's one thing ...

Maths for midges that pull 10g

Midges move with ferocious randomness, frequently subjecting themselves to accelerations of more than 10g, well beyond the limit of fighter pilots, as they duck and dive in swarms that still retain an almost paradoxical cohesiveness ...

NASA's Mars helicopter testing enters final phase

NASA's Mars Helicopter flight demonstration project has passed a number of key tests with flying colors. In 2021, the small, autonomous helicopter will be the first vehicle in history to attempt to establish the viability ...

Tricky take-off kept pterodactyls grounded

A new study, which teamed cutting-edge engineering techniques with paleontology, has found that take-off capacity may have determined body size limits in extinct flying reptiles. The research simulated pterodactyl flight ...

Eye of Gaia: Billion-pixel camera to map Milky Way

The largest digital camera ever built for a space mission has been painstakingly mosaicked together from 106 separate electronic detectors. The resulting "billion-pixel array" will serve as the super-sensitive 'eye' of ESA's ...

Secrets of insect flight revealed

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers are one step closer to creating a micro-aircraft that flies with the manoeuvrability and energy efficiency of an insect after decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight.

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