Aviation

The Dragon spacecraft is fewer than 20 minutes out from splashdown in Florida. As noted on NASA’s livestream, it has completed the deorbit burn that lasted about seven and a half minutes at 5:18PM ET, and is entering a period of communications blackout as they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

Last night, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with Crew-9 members Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nick Hague, left the ISS in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft now that the Crew-10 mission has arrived to relieve them. NASA will resume coverage of their return mission this afternoon, as they are expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57PM ET, ending a voyage that started last June.

Now that SpaceX ground teams have “successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air” in the ground support hydraulics system used for the clamp arm supporting the Falcon 9 rocket, there will be another attempt to launch the Crew-10 mission to the ISS tonight, after the first one on Wednesday was scrubbed.

Last year, United announced its intention to upgrade its entire fleet with Wi-Fi powered by Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites. As of today, the first Starlink-equipped regional plane is ready to fly. United said it only took about 8 hours to install the equipment, which is about 10 times faster than installing non-Starlink WiFi tech. The carrier plans to upgrade approximately 40 planes each month starting in May, with the goal of equipping the entire fleet of two-cabin regional aircraft by the end of the year.

The European economy airline had plans to go all digital with boarding passes by May, but now the change will happen starting November 3rd. Ryanair hasn’t said how passengers who can’t access the app will get their boarding passes, but it did share that 80 percent of its annual passengers use digital passes.

Delta Airlines flight 4819 from Minneapolis, MN crashed at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday, USA Today reports. Images shared by Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley show the plane upside down on the tarmac.

The investment builds on last year’s $430 million equity deal and leaves the aviation company with approximately $1 billion in liquidity. Archer says the money will be put toward building out its manufacturing capability in anticipation of launching an air taxi network in Los Angeles in time for the 2026 Olympics. The company is also moving more into the defense space, with plans to next-gen military aircraft for Anduril Industries. This funding round included investments from Blackrock, Willington, and leading institutional developers, Archer says.

Boom’s XB-1 test craft has flown at supersonic speeds for a second time following its first flight last month, and this time nobody heard a thing. Microphones below the flight path confirmed no sonic boom was audible at the ground.

The Vermont-based startup provided a tech demonstrator aircraft to use for mail delivery across the island in 2025. The air carrier also purchased several charging solutions to keep the battery-powered aircraft in flight. Air New Zealand will use the aircraft to familiarize itself with Beta’s technology, including pilot and maintenance teams and route-planning.

Vermont-based electric aviation company Beta Technologies announced the inaugural flight of the production version of its ALIA aircraft. The ALIA is a conventional takeoff and landing aircraft (CTOL), as opposed to a vertical takeoff and landing one (VTOL), meaning it lacks the tilt rotors that you see on other prototype aircraft. But the propulsion is still battery powered, putting Beta in the same category of many air taxi startups. The FAA signed off on the first flight, and now Beta is seeking certification for commercial operation.

Reuters reports Delta filed a lawsuit Friday over the July 19th crash, blaming CrowdStrike for having “forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash.”

The “catch” marks SpaceX’s first successful touchdown of Starship’s booster back at its launch site in South Texas.

Starship launched about 25 minutes later than planned, at about 8:25AM ET, as SpaceX needed to clear its range of boats.

You can catch the livestream on SpaceX’s website, its X account, or the X TV app.

A Frontier flight made an emergency landing with such force that its tires blew. Also, flames.

After separating from the ISS a few hours ago, Starliner is making its uncrewed landing, which is scheduled to touch down in New Mexico just after midnight ET.