Missing Malaysia Flight Goes Ham And A NASA Probe Goes Sunning In This Week's Beyond Cars Roundup

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared without a trace over a decade ago. Malaysia’s government announced last week that it will resume its search efforts for the missing airliner. Maritime robotics company Ocean Infinity signed an 18-month deal to lead the effort and will receive $70 million if they can find the aircraft. The search will utilize low-power transmissions to trace potential flight paths MH370 could have taken in 2014. - Ryan Erik King Read More

Legendary Austrian motorcycle brand KTM is up against the ropes at the moment getting pummeled. It was revealed during the company’s current insolvency hearings that it is sitting on a whole year’s worth of inventory, to the tune of 265,000 unsold motorcycles. In all my years on this big planet I’ve never seen company mismanagement on this order of magnitude. KTM owes its creditors some $3 billion, and apparently can’t move product to save its own ass. The future of orange is up in the air, and it probably won’t be a soft landing. - Bradley Brownell Read More

The International Space Station is nearly five years from its scheduled death date. NASA’s funeral plans include seeing a private station springboard off the ISS before the older station plunges into the Pacific Ocean. However, the space agency announced last week that the private Axiom Station could break free “as soon as 2028,” two years ahead of schedule. - Ryan Erik King Read More

A woman at the Los Angeles International Airport had her holiday travel plans delayed after the Transportation Security Administration found 88 illegal items in her carry-on, including explosives and knives last Sunday. According to the TSA, the woman was traveling with “82 consumer grade fireworks, three knives, two replica firearms and one canister of pepper spray.” It isn’t clear what the woman planned to do with the items, although a TSA press release did say the number of banned items “surprised even the longest tenured and most experienced TSA officer.” - Collin Woodard Read More

Putting a train under the Christmas tree was a time-honored tradition in the Kalmowitz household. When I was growing up, every year my family and I would spend hours setting up the train (sometimes two or three of them) under the tree, and I’d endlessly make them go back and forth. However, there was something I always wanted to do that I was never able to actually make happen: putting a Disney World Monorail under the tree. - Andy Kalmowitz Read More

An Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to the Chechnyan city of Grozny crashed Wednesday, killing 38. The plane flew hundreds of miles off its route and crashed on the wrong side of the Caspian Sea in Aktau, Kazakhstan, with 29 survivors currently being treated at a nearby hospital. Russian officials initially blamed the crash on a bird strike, Reuters reports, although other aviation experts aren’t so sure. - Collin Woodard Read More

Boeing had a year that its executives will definitely want to forget. An inflight door plug blow-out on a 737 Max led the Department of Justice to shred its 2021 settlement with the aerospace manufacturer over the plane’s two fatal crashes. Boeing pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. - Ryan Erik King Read More

The Parker Solar Probe is expected to skim the Sun’s outer atmosphere on Tuesday. NASA’s probe will come within 3.86 million miles of the solar surface, closer than any human-built object ever. It might seem distant, but Mercury is 39.4 million away from the system’s namesake star. The probe will be coming in hot in more ways than one, hitting 1,800 degrees while hurtling through space at an awe-inspiring 430,000 miles per hour. - Ryan Erik King Read More