Aerospace/Defense

SÃO PAULO—Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, flew to Brazil on Friday to announce a plan to connect thousands of schools in the Amazon to the internet and help monitor illegal logging across the world’s biggest rainforest. In a joint statement with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. chief executive said he planned to get 19,000 of the most remote schools online by using the Starlink satellite networkof his…

A Boeingspacecraft blasted into orbit and began racing toward the International Space Station, despite facing an issue with two of the thrusters the vehicle uses. After months of delays, the Starliner spacecraft launched toward orbit shortly before 7 p.m. Eastern time Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida without crew members on board, according to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration live stream. The vehicle is expected to fly to the space station and dock there Friday, before it returns to Earth…

The Future of Everything Festival is happening right now. Click here to register and watch for free as a member. Amazon. com Inc. is focused more on technologies that affect the real world, rather than the so-called metaverse. The e-commerce giant’s ambitions, for now, are to expand the capabilities of its devices arsenal, including with home robots and ambient computing, said David Limp, senior vice president of…

After months of delays, the company’s Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to be blasted into orbit at 6:54 p.m. Eastern time Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida without crew members on board, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The vehicle is expected to fly to the International Space Station and dock there Friday, before it returns to Earth several days later. The Starliner—a gumdrop-shaped vehicle with room for seven people—so far hasn’t been able to complete a test mission to the…

LONDON— Boeing Co. BA -4.95% won a key order for 737 MAX aircraft from the owner of British Airways, ICAGY -3.21% in a boost for the plane maker after losing a series of sales from longtime customers to rival Airbus EADSY -3.15% SE. International Consolidated Airlines Group SA, which owns airlines including BA, Ireland’s Aer Lingus…

Flight data indicates someone in the cockpit intentionally crashed a China Eastern jet earlier this year, according to people familiar with U.S. officials’ preliminary assessment of what led to the accident. The Boeing 737-800 was cruising at high altitude when it suddenly pitched into a near-vertical descent, plummeting into a mountain at extreme speed. Data from a black box recovered in the crash suggests inputs to the controls pushed the plane into the fatal dive, these people said.…

LONDON—The chief executive of Ryanair Holdings PLC, one of Boeing biggest customers, took aim at the planemaker’s sales team and its 737 MAX delivery schedule and said the company needed to reboot its commercial-aircraft division.Michael O’Learyalso questioned Boeing’s pending shift of its headquarters from Chicago to Virginia. While the move “may be good for the defense side of the business, it doesn’t fix the fundamental underlying problems on the civilian aircraft side in Seattle,” Mr. O’Leary told analysts on a…

The startups and investors that have sent hopes soaring for “flying cars” could be in for a rough landing, in more ways than one.Hundreds of companies, new ones and legacy aviation players alike, are working on such vehicles—also called air taxis or eVTOLs (short for electric vertical take off and landing). Five such startups have gone public in the past 12 months. They are trying to shape a near future in which taking a flying cab is an economically viable alternative to taking a terrestrial one. The biggest stumbling…

Amprius Technologies Inc. has reached a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company that values the maker of silicon-anode batteries at about $1.3 billion and would take it public, company officials said. Based in Fremont, Calif., Amprius makes batteries that it says are more powerful than conventional lithium-ion cells because they use energy-dense silicon in the battery’s anode instead of graphite, the traditional material. The company currently sells them to customers such as…

Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -2.05% played a bigger behind-the-scenes role in developing early Boeing BA -4.58% 737 MAX pilot training than previously known, according to a recent legal filing that cites internal Southwest and Boeing company documents.During the development of 737 MAX training, the carrier agreed with Boeing to remove from pilot manuals references to a version of the automated flight-control system that…