Airbus

Airbus' latest high-endurance stratosphere drone, the Zephyr S, has set a new altitude record for an Unmanned Aerial System in its class, soaring to 76,100 ft in the skies over Arizona during two flights totaling 36 days aloft.

After shutting down the Vahana program in 2019, Airbus has revealed the new four-seat electric VTOL aircraft it's taking to the air taxi market for 2025. And while it's very pretty, the new CityAirbus's spec sheet is surprisingly underwhelming.

Airbus is expanding the capabilities of its Flightlab helicopter designed to test out next-generation aviation technologies, by incorporating some advanced hardware geared toward autonomous flight, including LiDAR sensors from Luminar.

Airbus is working on a number of hydrogen-powered aircraft, and it's just found a new angle on cryogenic liquid H2 fuel: using it to supercool the powertrain down to superconducting temperatures, possibly unlocking huge weight and efficiency savings.

Europe is getting into the space manufacturing race as the European Commission awards Airbus a €3-million (US$3.5-million) contract to study the potential for assembling spacecraft in low-Earth orbit using robotic systems.

We're all hoping for electric VTOL aircraft, but France's Ascendance isn't willing to wait for batteries and hydrogen to break through. The company says its Atea hybrid will deliver long-range VTOL travel with just 20 percent of a helicopter's emissions.

Airbus Helicopter's Flightlab flying laboratory based on the H130 copter has taken to the air for the first to perform a series of platform-agnostic in-flight tests of new systems aimed at ushering in next-generation aircraft technologies.

With the move towards electric aviation comes new opportunities to explore what a powertrain looks like, and Airbus is experimenting with a new design that builds entire hydrogen propulsion units, tanks and all, into detachable pods along the wings.

ESA has awarded Airbus a €491 million contract to design and build the Earth Return Orbiter, which will return the first samples collected from the Red Planet by NASA's Perseverance rover to Earth.

Looking forward to a zero-emission future for the commercial aircraft industry, Airbus has revealed three hydrogen-fueled concepts, including a striking blended wing design, with the aim of putting the first flyer into service by 2035.

Autopilot has been around longer than you think – the first daredevil public demos happened back in 1914. But today's airliners still need pilots, and Airbus has only recently completed testing on the first autonomous taxi, takeoff and landing system.

Airbus Helicopters' VSR700 unmanned aerial system (UAS) prototype has flown autonomously for the first time. At a drone test center near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, the pilotless rotorcraft performed a 10-minute free flight.