Countless hours spent designing, hand-building and testing model rockets has paid off for 100 teams that will be vying for the sixth annual Team American Rocketry Challenge national title next month.

The Aerospace Industries Association announced the finalists for the world's largest rocket contest Friday. The teams will meet at Great Meadow in The Plains, Va., on May 17 for a final fly-off and a chance to win more than $60,000 in scholarships and other prizes.

About 7,000 students on 643 teams from 43 states and the District of Columbia took part in the qualifying rounds of competition.

There’s a strange wave phenomenon that’s plagued rocket scientists for years, a lurking threat with the power to destroy an engine at almost any time. For decades, scientists have had a limited understanding of how or why it happens because they could not replicate or investigate the problem under controlled laboratory conditions.

Scientists generally believe that these powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the combustion process, were the cause of rocket failures in several U.S. and Russian rockets. Scientists have also observed these mysterious oscillations in other propulsion and power-generating systems such as missiles and gas turbines.

The F-35 is a supersonic, multi-role, 5th generation stealth fighter. Three F-35 variants derived from a common design, developed together and using the same sustainment infrastructure worldwide, will replace at least 13 types of aircraft for 11 nations initially, making the Lightning II the most economical fighter program in history.

The program is on schedule to deliver aircraft to the U.S. military services beginning in 2010. The first test aircraft has completed 35 flights and has exceeded performance expectations. The inaugural flight of the first short takeoff/vertical landing F-35B is on schedule for mid-2008. All 19 test aircraft are in production flow or on the flightline, and assembly has begun on the first two production F-35s.

Jet engines operate at temperatures of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit and blades in the most advanced aircraft engines are coated with a thin layer of temperature-resistant, thermally-insulating ceramic to protect the metal. The coating -- referred to as a thermal-barrier coating -- is designed like an accordion to expand and contract with the metal.

The problem: When sand hits the hot engine blade it melts -- and becomes glass. “Molten glass is one of the nastiest substances around. It will dissolve anything,” says Nitin Padture, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State.

Although it's been a half century since America entered the space age, the basic propulsion concepts used to push Explorer I into space will be the same type of propulsion that the nation will use to begin the next half century of space exploration.

It was January 31, 1958 when a Redstone-Jupiter C rocket developed in Huntsville, Ala., lifted the 30-pound artificial satellite into space.

Clark Hawk, director of the Propulsion Research Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAHuntsville) has seen most of the advances that have taken place in rocket propulsion. He has spent 50 years conducting research in the field.

The RoboSwift micro-aircraft has made its first flight. The small, quiet plane is equipped with observation cameras that can be used in the future to study birds or to conduct surveillance of groups of people or vehicles.

The RoboSwift is characterised by the continuously variable shape of its wings, known as ‘morphing' wings, which are modelled on the wings of the swift bird. These wings make the aircraft, like its living model, very maneuverable and efficient. As a result, the RoboSwift is the first aircraft in the world to have the wing properties of living birds. Wind tunnel tests have shown that it can come remarkably close to the exceptional flying ability of the swift.

The silhouette of the RoboSwift is similar to that of an actual swift, which makes it less noticeable than other observation aircraft and helicopters. The ‘pilot’ is now being trained in birdlike flying behavior, which will later include gliding flights.

Sometimes scientists won't understand it even after they see it, but at least they'll believe it despite its improbability. Such is the case with bats, the bumblebee and the hummingbird, which according to classic wing theory should not be able to fly. Yet they seem to have forgotten to read that textbook.

In 1995, bumblebee flight got its answer. This week, the aerodynamics of a hovering bat species has been revealed. Its flight was studied in the wind tunnel laboratory of Lund University.

The wind tunnel at Lund University is specially crafted for research on bird flight. Birds fly “at the spot” against a headwind, allowing detailed investigation of wing movements using high speed video cameras. It’s also possible to visualize the vortices around the wings and in the wake using fog as tracer particles.

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate has amended its NASA Research Announcement to solicit additional research proposals. The Research Opportunities in Aeronautics 2007 has been amended to include new topics in support of the Subsonic Rotary Wing Project.

Lockheed Martin's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Weapon System successfully destroyed an errant United States satellite, preventing it from an uncontrolled and unpredictable reentry and potential crash to Earth.

In the mission, the SPY-1B radar on the cruiser USS Lake Erie detected the satellite during its orbit and, through the capable equipment and computer programs comprising the Aegis Weapon System, computed a targeting solution to guide an SM-3 missile to intercept the satellite. Once the SM-3 was launched from the ship's MK 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS), Aegis guided the missile to the terminal phase of the intercept.

Lockheed Martin engineers recently worked with U.S. Navy, Missile
Defense Agency, national laboratory and other industry engineers and scientists to modify the Aegis BMD Weapon System to specifically take on this one-time emergency mission.

With the co-location of the Navy's Combat Systems Engineering
Development Site and Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, NJ, the work to design and test the modifications required for this mission was made much easier. The real-time collaboration between engineers and Sailors with the land-based Aegis BMD Weapon System was a critical factor in meeting the timeline for the mission.

"Aegis BMD and the team behind it have answered every call to defeat threats to our nation and allies," said Fred Moosally, president of Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors. "From the engineers designing and developing Aegis BMD to the men and women in uniform carrying out the mission, Aegis BMD delivers!"

Aerospace engineers are again looking to natural flyers to create the next generation in airplanes.

For example:

• A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second but a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75.
• The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second.
• Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G.