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EDWARDS AFB ­- Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts are going into space wearing a mission patch designed by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center research pilot Mark Pestana. Mission STS-123 will take to the international space station the Japanese Kibo module, which will hold electronic equipment and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. It also carries the Canadian Dextre robot, which will attach to the station's robotic arm and allow astronauts to replace hardware outside the station without doing a spacewalk. Pestana's logo depicts a shuttle with its mechanical arm extending the Kibo module to the station. Behind the shuttle...

SEATTLE - Clayton Scott, who served as Bill Boeing's personal pilot and later become a top Boeing Co. test pilot, has died at age 101. Scott's death was confirmed by Eden Hopkins, a spokeswoman for The Museum of Flight, which is hosting a memorial service for him Oct. 6. The service will be open to the public. He apparently died of a heart attack at his apartment in Mercer Island, east of Seattle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported for Friday editions. Scott was born July 15, 1905, in Coudersport, Pa., and later moved to the Pacific Northwest. An early aviation buff,...

Test pilot Joe Walker was killed June 8, 1966, when his F-104 chase plane collided in midair with an XB-70 supersonic bomber during a formation flight for a publicity photo. The catastrophic accident took the life of the top NASA test pilot, who earned astronaut wings by piloting the X-15 into space three times, as well as that of Air Force Maj. Carl Cross, one of two pilots of the XB-70. Thursday, on the 40th anniversary of that fateful flight, Walker's son and other admirers visited the crash site in a remote portion of the Mojave Desert to pay their...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Search teams combed the forests of northern Georgia Thursday for a missing airplane registered to legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. Officials did not immediately know who was flying the single-engine plane or whether Crossfield was aboard when it left Alabama for Virginia on Wednesday morning.

Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann has taken a Boeing 777-200LR jetliner above 30,000 feet and let it stall, testing whether it can recover without a precipitous drop. She has put it into a dive, approaching the speed of sound. Soon, while accelerating down the runway, she'll shut one of the two engines to test that the jet can still take off safely. How's that for a dream job at 52? Capt. Darcy-Hennemann is a senior test pilot on Boeing's 777 program and lead pilot on current test flights of the 777-200LR, the latest ultra-long-range model. She began initial flights over Puget Sound...

It has been 35 years since NASA pilot Bill Dana landed an X-15 on the dusty lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base. It was Oct. 24, 1968, and Dana had just completed the 199th flight in the X-15 program. He was eager for another turn in the cockpit because a high-altitude camera experiment did not go well that day, and he wanted to repeat the test. It was not to be. The X-15 program was ended less than two months later, before the 200th flight could be made, and Dana would carry the distinction of being the last pilot to...

WASHINGTON - One of the Air Force's prized - and politically vulnerable - (KRT) - F/A-22 Raptor fighter jets nearly crashed during a recent practice flight, prompting an investigation, service officials confirm. The previously unreported incident occurred Sept. 19 near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., officials said, when an experienced F-15 pilot with less than 20 hours in the exotic new F/A-22 attempted a dogfight maneuver that sent the aircraft plummeting downward in an upside-down spiral. The unidentified pilot became disoriented as the $161 million plane plunged more than 10,000 feet from a beginning altitude of 13,000 to 15,000 feet,...

State Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight said Tuesday that it is going to take a "mini-revolution" to turn around the state of California. "I don't mean shoot 'em up," he said. "California's being governed by San Francisco and Los Angeles," said the Palmdale Republican, addressing about 50 members of the Greater Antelope Valley Chamber of Commerce during a luncheon at the AV Country Club. "California is sinking under the influence of the liberal Democrats," Knight said.Knight scoffed at criticisms by recall opponents that the attempt to oust Gov. Gray Davis impedes the Democratic process. Reading from a list of names,...

Russell M. "Rusty" Roth entered aviation history on Dec. 9, 1952, over Edwards Air Force Base, flying Republic Aviation Corp.'s XF-91 Thunderceptor rocket-boosted jet fighter prototype, making it the first combat-type airplane to exceed the speed of sound while flying straight and level. A World War II P-38 fighter pilot, Roth flew 132 combat missions in the South Pacific before arriving at Edwards. As the assistant chief of the flight development branch, he flight-tested the XB-43 and F-86 as well as the Northrop Flying Wing N9M. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School Class 1949-D at Wright...

Steve Austin who? Few people know there was a real $6 million man: Bruce Peterson, a NASA Dryden Research pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1960s, was a pioneer in the testing of lifting bodies. His all-too-real 1967 crash at Edwards was used in the opening credits of the 1970s television show "The Six Million Dollar Man," starring Lee Majors as Austin. A former Marine Corps pilot, Peterson joined NASA in 1960 as an aeronautical engineer and was a project pilot on the Rogallo paraglider research vehicle, or Parasev, program. Parasev evaluated the use of an inflatable, flexible...

LANCASTER - He has flown 240 different kinds of aircraft, logging 16,700 hours of flight time while setting records and performing test piloting feats that are the "right stuff" of aviation history. Contrary to the popular image of high-flying test pilots, however, the one thing that everyone who has met Fitzhugh "Fitz" Fulton notes is his courtly "Southern gentleman" manner. Despite his many noteworthy accomplishments and awards, Fulton remains "so humble," said Paula Smith, executive director of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. "He always seems surprised when someone honors him." Fulton's already long list of awards was lengthened recently...