NASA has added four new partners to its Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign. The organization has signed Space Act Agreements with eVTOL developers Supernal and Overair, eSTOL company Electra.aero, and transportation consultant Ellis & Associates, which will see the new partners begin sharing information with NASA, as it prepares for the second phase of the campaign.
Through the National Campaign, NASA has worked with more than 30 of its partners, which include vehicle developers, infrastructure providers, and airspace managers, to establish flight test infrastructure, explore future flight path designs, and help move technologies such as eVTOL aircraft toward certification and use.
The National Campaign’s first phase, NC-1, focused on operational safety related to eVTOL vehicles, automation, airspace, acoustics modeling, concepts of operations, contingencies at all phases of flight, and mobile landing surfaces.
The organization recently shared results from acoustic testing conducted with Joby Aviation in September 2021, and plans to conduct similar testing with Wisk Aero.
Al Capps, acting project lead for the AAM National Campaign, said the team “is making strides in understanding how the vehicles, infrastructure and airspace will operate in urban, suburban, rural, and intraregional environments.”
NC-2 will focus on demonstrating integrated AAM automation capabilities and architectures, and will include flight test demonstrations and simulations, as well as systems and operations analysis at test sites across the U.S.
The new partners have agreed to share information about their vehicles, traffic management systems, infrastructure, and capabilities, giving NASA early insight to prepare for NC-2.
NASA intends to use data from the National Campaign to assist the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in defining regulatory compliance, prepare both vehicles and airspace for commercial operations, and move AAM forward in the U.S.
“Each additional research partner and operational flight demonstration helps inform approaches by our partners at the FAA and the future concept of operations,” Capps said.
