Christina Li

To sustain lunar missions and open the rest of the solar system, refueling spacecraft in space will be critical. Working with cryogenic propellants such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen can be challenging. Blue Origin teamed with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center at their TS300 thermal vacuum chamber to demonstrate the transfer of these propellants. The Blue Origin Utility Transfer Mechanism (UTM) builds on our decades-long experience with liquid hydrogen and oxygen on New Shepard and New Glenn's second stage. We tested multiple transfers and mate/demate operations, with the UTMs outperforming all performance requirements. These UTMs enable our Transporter to dock with the Blue Moon MK2 Lander and conduct in-space cryogenic propellant transfer operations.

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Propellers have looked the same since the steamship era—until Sharrow Engineering threw out the rulebook. This Detroit-based upstart has unveiled a radical closed-loop propeller design that ditches the old blade-and-vortex model for something smoother, quieter, and up to 30% more efficient. It doesn’t just cut fuel use—it redefines control, eliminating the drag and turbulence that’s plagued marine propulsion for nearly two centuries. Now scaling up in a massive new Detroit facility, Sharrow isn’t just targeting weekend boaters—they’re gunning for the entire marine industry. The age of the spinning blade may finally be over. https://lnkd.in/ekp8ycYp FuturistSpeaker.com

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We are proud to announce that SpaceX veteran Chris Thompson has been appointed as President of Phantom Space Corporation in addition to his existing role as Co-Founder & CTO. Chris is one of the most accomplished rocket and space systems engineers in history and will now oversee Phantom’s strategic operations while he continues to lead the development of Phantom’s Daytona launch vehicle and Phantom Cloud orbital data network. His expanded leadership marks a new chapter in Phantom’s development and further improves our position as a pioneer in scalable, cost-effective space solutions. https://lnkd.in/gcPAaVXm

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One of the rarest sights in rocketry: An Aerospike rocket engine after a successful test. Like all of our engines, this 5 kN KeroLOX thruster was generated by the Noyron Large Computational Engineering Model. No human CAD drawing, just algorithms doing their work. After our recent testing, we are encouraged by the potential for Aerospikes for efficient access to space. None of the old arguments (too complex, too heavy, not worth it) seem to make much sense in a world of #ComputationalEngineering and industrial Additive Manufacturing. Weight is comparable, complexity is irrelevant if printed in one monolithic piece, and the efficiency gain, especially for vacuum and throttled operation, is significant. Manufactured at Aconity3D GmbH. #Aerospike #Noyron #AdditiveManufacturing

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Engineers Christopher Kantzos and Tim Smith (an ASM Member) from the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland can now call themselves inventors. They are the minds behind NASA Glenn’s breakthrough material, GRX-810. Their superalloy, developed for extreme conditions of air and spaceflight, was selected as NASA’s Commercial Invention of the Year for 2025. Check out this video courtesy of WKYC.com to hear about the invention: https://lnkd.in/eNmFbwkn Smith and Kantzos were interviewed by Advanced Materials & Processes magazine in 2023. Read more about GRX-810 in that interview summary published in AM&P October 2023 here: https://lnkd.in/eV89WtiC #SpaceInnovation #MaterialsScience #engineering #materials #Invention #discovery #NASA

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Archer Founder and CEO, Adam Goldstein on the Federal Aviation Administration & U.S. Department of Transportation's eVTOL Integration Program announcement: “This is a landmark moment for our industry and our country. We have an Administration that is prioritizing the integration of eVTOL operations in U.S. cities ahead of full certification in a pragmatic way. More from @CNBC: https://cnb.cx/3KoArs9

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𝐋𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 & 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 Excited to share the lunar constellation design I worked on for the paper: “Optical Communication for Lunar Services: Feasibility, Performance, and Advantages” presented at IAC 2025 Sydney by Hoda Awny. So, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚? We designed a Walker Delta Constellation in Frozen Orbits chosen for their stability and minimal drift, also used in ESA’s Moonlight Mission. 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲𝘀 : 8 (2 per orbit) 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 :HPOP (High Precision Orbit Propagator) for accurate trajectory calculations. the constellation enables inter-satellite links and continuous coverage of the Moon, supporting optical communication for lunar missions and connecting key sites on the surface. 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭: Achieved continuous lunar coverage and reliable access for future lunar services. 

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Wrapped up one of my favourite side projects yet: AutoGlide - a guidance, navigation, and control stack for autonomous thermal centring and soaring! If you've had a conversation with me, you (probably) know I'm a pilot, and I figured trying to make a glider autopilot would be a fun way to dig deeper into applied guidance law and nonlinear controls/state estimation development. Along the way, I got nerdsniped into some pretty interesting rabbit holes: - Nonlinear control laws (L1 guidance, speed-to-fly, and centering strategies) - Nonlinear state estimation (estimating thermal core location/strength online) - Importance of optimization theory and need for regularization when employed for the purposes of control - Observability quirks when dealing with windowed vs recursive estimation strategies - Using Monte Carlo analysis to stress-test robustness and inform tuning parameters It’s been a fun exercise in turning theory (papers, proofs, derivations) into something that actually runs end-to-end to successfully identify, center and climb a thermal, as shown in the gif below! For now, the implemented stack stays thermalling indefinitely, but I'm hoping I'll find some time to tie it into Condor2 and see how well it does against me in a race. Repo here with whitepaper-style documentation if you’re curious: https://lnkd.in/exv3FQU9

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🚀Countdown to MAPHEUS-16: Six minutes of weightlessness and many new insights for science and industry 🔬 MAPHEUS is the sounding rocket of the DLR-Institute for Frontier Materials on Earth and in Space, the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine, and DLR Mobile Rocket Base MORABA. Each year, a #MAPHEUS sounding rocket carries approximately 400 kilograms of scientific payload to an altitude of around 260 kilometres, enabling six minutes of microgravity for pioneering research in materials science and life sciences. 🛠️The MAPHEUS-16 campaign is in full preparation now. We are getting everything set for the bench- and environmental tests, and from the end of October on, the campaign will take place at Swedish Space Corporation's Esrange launch site in the North of Sweden. This mission contains around 20 different experiments, including such diverse things as technology tests for filament-based #3D-printing of metallic parts in #microgravity, or the study of how life cells and organoids respond to the absence of gravity. Other experiments investigate the spreading of complex fluids, the solidification of molten metallic #alloys, or the gravity-induced changes in the physics of cellular membranes. Following a #NewSpace approach, many small CubeSat-sized experiments are onboard MAPHEUS-16, including demonstrations of secure data transfer, sensor tests, and thermoelectric generators powering small sensor nodes directly from the heat generated during the rocket launch. MAPHEUS continues to provide a unique platform for research and industry. We look forward to sharing further updates as the MAPHEUS-16 mission progresses. In the slideshow below you can find some impressions from the last campaign. Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt e.V. DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine #DLR #Raumfahrt #Forschungsrakete #Höhenforschungsrakte

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