“Expect traffic on the 101 highway in Mountain View, Calif., to be even worse in the days or weeks ahead, as motorists slow down to watch Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s 124-meter-long airship, Pathfinder 1, launch into the air for the first time.

IEEE Spectrum has learned that LTA Research, the company that Brin founded in 2015 to develop airships for humanitarian and cargo transport, received a special airworthiness certificate for the helium-filled airship in early September…

Although its rigid design hearkens back to the gargantuan airships of the early 20th century, Pathfinder 1 is almost completely different from any large airship that has flown before. Crucially, its reported 3,000 welded titanium hubs and 10,000 carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer tubes are light enough that it can use nonflammable helium instead of explosive hydrogen as a lifting gas.”

From IEEE Spectrum.

“American companies led by Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo have drawn much of the limelight with driverless cars deployed almost entirely on home soil. Now that some are beginning to look abroad, they’ll have to share roads with Chinese companies quietly making plenty of progress.

Baidu Inc.’s Apollo Go, WeRide Inc. and Pony AI Inc. are outnumbering their American counterparts with more robotaxi projects progressing from testing to various stages of commercialization, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. While much of that headway is being made domestically, the Chinese companies are standing up operations in places like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and looking to launch in Germany, the UK and elsewhere in Europe.”

From Bloomberg.

“NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) experimental supersonic aircraft took to the skies for the first time on October 28, 2025 from Lockheed Martin’s famously secret Skunk Works at the US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California…

Today, there are hopes of reviving supersonic travel on a large scale, with a number of companies across the world working on a new generation of Mach+ transports. To encourage this effort, NASA has been working with Lockheed Martin on the X-59, which is a technological demonstrator prototype designed to find ways to make 21st century supersonic flight feasible – and quieter.

The primary function of the single-seater X-59 is to test a new fuselage geometry that mitigates the sonic boom. It does this by shaping the flow of air from the nose and over the hull and wings so that instead of concentrating at the nose, the wave breaks up and spreads out along the aircraft, which also redirects the wave upwards. The result is that the sonic boom becomes a sonic thump of 60 dB to 80 dB, or about that of a car door closing for those on the ground.

This will not only help to make supersonic airliners play nice with others, it will also help to rewrite regulations. To that end, in future stages, the X-59 will fly over communities in a special supersonic air corridor to gather public opinion about the results.

The maiden flight that ended with a landing near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California only reached subsonic speeds because it was only intended to show the aircraft’s flightworthiness. In later tests, NASA plans to push the envelope until it goes past the speed of sound, after which the heavy work of the program can begin.”

From New Atlas.

“After being inactive for two months, Amazon’s drones are once again taking to the skies.

Amazon confirmed to CNBC on Monday that it will resume Prime Air drone deliveries in the two U.S. areas where it is testing the service: College Station, Texas, and Tolleson, Arizona.

Amazon stopped drone deliveries in the two states in January after detecting issues with the altitude sensors of its 80-pound MK30 drones. Dusty air in the two cities had the potential to interfere with the drone’s altitude readings, creating a safety risk.

Amazon said on Monday that it did not experience any safety incidents in flights from the altitude sensor, but it took the precaution of stopping deliveries until it had rolled out a software update to fix the issue. As of last week, Amazon completed the update and received a stamp of approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume operations.”

From MSN.