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2020-03-01
NASA’s Research to Drive Future Aviation Advances
Over the last year, NASA’s aeronautical innovators have worked diligently to explore safe advances in atmospheric flight that directly benefit all of us, meet the rapidly evolving needs of industry, spark economic growth, and ensure the U.S. remains the world’s leader in all things related to flight.
NASA’s Strategic Implementation Plan sets forth the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) vision for aeronautical research aimed at the next 25 years and beyond. It encompasses a broad range of technologies to meet future needs of the world for safe, efficient, flexible, and environmentally sustainable air transportation.
A key element of the plan is a set of Strategic Thrusts, which ARMD uses to determine its critical commitment to each area. The Strategic Thrusts are living constructs that are updated in response to shifts in global trends. These Strategic Thrusts were developed in 2017:
•Strategic Thrust 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations
•Strategic Thrust 2: Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft
•Strategic Thrust 3: Ultra-Efficient Commercial Vehicles
•Strategic Thrust 4: Transition to Low-Carbon Propulsion
•Strategic Thrust 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance
•Strategic Thrust 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation
This plan will be updated as ARMD continues to work on achieving a vision that enables the current aviation system to best meet future demands and opportunities.
Based on the strategic research plan, NASA’s flight team during 2019 was widely focused on conducting scientific and engineering investigations in three broad areas:
• Enabling a new market for commercial supersonic air travel over land with the help of data gathered by the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) airplane, which is on target to make its first flight during 2021.
• Leading industry in developing technology and systems to safely enable Urban Air Mobility – the use of small delivery drones and other new aircraft within the National Airspace System over anywhere from small communities to large metropolitan areas to conduct missions including civic resource management, package delivery, and transporting passengers on-demand.
•Reducing emissions, minimising noise, and shrinking reliance on fossil fuels in large part by studying electrically driven methods of propulsion on aircraft, including the X-57 Maxwell, which is serving as a testbed for solving the challenges of integrating a fully electric propulsion system on a general aviation-sized airplane.
In pursuing these goals and many others, NASA’s air traffic management experts partnered with the brightest aviation experts within government, industry and academia.
Taming the Sonic Booms to Enable Overland Flights
Project teams during 2019 made steady progress with the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration mission, which seeks to enable the possibility of boarding a commercial supersonic airliner and flying across the United States in half the time.
To support this goal, NASA is building the X-59 QueSST airplane, whose unique shape and technology is designed to turn the annoying sonic booms associated with faster-than-sound flight into barely perceptible sonic thumps.
The X-59 will never carry passengers, but it will likely kick off a new generation of quiet supersonic commercial planes that can fly over land and dramatically reduce the time it takes to get you across the U.S. and to other countries.
Existing restrictions only allow commercial supersonic aircraft to fly over the ocean because of the disruptive sonic boom heard by people on the ground. NASA wants to prove that commercial supersonic aircraft can fly over land without disturbing communities.
An aircraft’s wing provides the force necessary to lift an aircraft into the air. In the case of the X-59, the wing will allow it to lift at altitudes up to 55,000 feet and speeds up to 1.4 times the speed of sound or 940 mph.
Unlike conventional aircraft, the wing of the X-59 is designed to interact with other features of the aircraft, such as its long nose, top-mounted engine, and uniquely placed canards, to control the location and strength of shockwaves.
As an aircraft flies through the sky faster than the speed of sound, air ahead is unaware of the plane’s approach. When the aircraft passes through that air, pressure changes happen in an instant, forming shockwaves that move away from the aircraft and eventually merge behind it, producing a disruptive sonic boom to communities below. Conversely, the design of the X-59 prevents shockwaves from merging, which creates a thump sound, barely audible to people on the ground.
To prove the X-59 works as described, NASA will fly the aircraft within the supersonic test range over NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center and Edwards Air Force Base in California. Once the speedy aircraft shows it can safely perform as expected, NASA will fly the X-59 above select U.S. communities to gather data on the public’s response to the sound it produces on the ground.
In 2023, the X-59 QueSST will begin community flight tests, which will demonstrate that annoying sonic booms can be transformed into quieter “sonic thumps.” These flights and the data they generate will pave the way for a next generation of commercial supersonic flight.
Construction of the X-59 by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Palmdale, California, continued in earnest as the project passed its Critical Design Review in October 2019 and another key programme management review in December 2019.
The unusual design of the X-59 airplane required to quiet a sonic boom heard on the ground to a sonic thump results in the cockpit being farther back and lower in the fuselage.
This prevents the pilot from having a forward-facing window. To solve this problem, NASA during 2019 successfully tested an eXternal Vision System (XVS) using a Beechcraft UC-12B research aircraft.
The XVS relies on cameras and custom image processing software to generate an augmented reality view on a high-definition monitor mounted directly in front of the pilot.
Taking on the Challenge to Better UAM
As the proliferation of drones dominated discussions about the future of aviation not only in the United States but around the world, NASA Aeronautics during 2019 kept pace with their role as leaders in the area of Urban Air Mobility (UAM).
NASA and its government, industry and academic partners wrapped up the final of four aerial demonstrations of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) system. These demonstrations – known as Technical Capability Levels (TCL) – began in 2015.
For the final set of demonstrations (TCL-4) pilots during 2019 flew their drones in and around the dense urban environments. After seeking input from a number of sources throughout the year, NASA laid the foundation for conducting a series of UAM-related events known as the Grand Challenge, the first of which is targeted for 2022.
The Grand Challenge aims to improve UAM safety and accelerate scalability through integrated demonstrations by hosting a series of UAM ecosystem-wide challenges beginning in 2020. The first testing opportunity in the Grand Challenge series will focus on the developmental testing of U.S. developed aircraft. Participants selected for the developmental testing, also known as GC-DT, will have the opportunity to fly at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, or a range of their choice, and participate in collaborative airspace operations simulations.
GC-DT is the first step toward Grand Challenge 1 (GC-1) in 2022, which will involve broad industry participation.
GC-1 will require participants to demonstrate safe operation of a piloted or remotely piloted aircraft capable of carrying a payload equivalent to at least one adult passenger within a complex simulated urban environment. GC-1 will test UAM technologies against key barriers to UAM integration in the U.S. national airspace, such as: adverse weather, emergency landings, surveillance, loss of communication and operations scheduling and routing.
All-electric Propulsion
With global interest in reducing aviation’s impact on the environment, NASA Aeronautics during 2019 focused on developing technologies and systems that could be incorporated into future airplanes whose propulsion is powered by electricity.
Much of the research into electrified aircraft propulsion centred on testing and preparing the all-electric X-57 Maxwell for its initial flight tests still ahead. NASA’s X-57 project has marked two critical milestones, taking two major steps toward demonstrating the benefits of electric propulsion for aviation.
The X-57 project is addressing issues like noise and emissions through several successive phases, in which the aircraft, a Tecnam P2006T, will undergo different modifications, or “Mods”.
One of these milestones was achieved as part of X-57’s Mod II activity – the configuration in which the X-57 project will flight test the research propulsion system and will eventually fly as a fully electric aircraft. Mod II includes the replacement of the baseline aircraft’s two inboard combustion engines with electric cruise motors.
X-57 will be powered by a battery system that consists of 16 battery modules. NASA researchers will use Maxwell to demonstrate that electric propulsion can make planes quieter, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.
While Mod II proceeds toward testing, efforts are already well underway for X-57’s Mod III phase. Mod III includes the replacement of the aircraft’s baseline wing with a new, high-aspect ratio wing, and features the repositioning of the electric cruise motors out to the wingtips – an arrangement that presents the potential to boost aircraft efficiency considerably, but was not feasible with heavier, traditional combustion engines.
X-57’s Mod III activity also achieved a major milestone, as NASA received delivery of the Mod III wing from the project’s prime contractor, Empirical Systems Aerospace, Inc. of San Luis Obispo, California, or ESAero.
“I think that getting the wing here really brings Mod III to reality for the team,” said X-57 Deputy Operations Engineering Lead Kirsten Boogaard. “Having the wing come here and people being able to see the size of it, the look of it, just actually see it in person instead of in models, I think, is a really big deal for the project.”
During 2019, engineers studied an innovative way to cool the heat generated by the electronics associated with the X-57’s electric motors. Systems that would someday support deploying electric propulsion in larger airliners also were investigated in 2019.
Many Milestones from NASA in 2019
NASA made headlines in other areas throughout the year. Here are some highlights:
The Mars Helicopter: When the Mars 2020 lander lifts off from Cape Canaveral in 2020, it will be carrying an experimental helicopter. The Mars Helicopter will be able to fly as high as about 15 feet above the Red Planet thanks to its two sets of rotor blades – each four feet long, tip-to-tip – spinning at 2,400 rotations per minute, which is about 10 times faster than an Earth helicopter. The smallness of the main helicopter body helps too. It’s only about the size of a softball and will weigh just under four pounds.
This first Mars Helicopter will serve as a technology demonstrator that, if successful, will enable future scientists to remotely explore regions of the planet’s surface far from its mothership’s landing site.
3D Printing for De-icing: NASA during 2019 wrapped up an effort that used 3D printing as a research tool to generate new data that will help airplane makers and operators more efficiently deal with one of aviation’s oldest safety challenges – namely, icing.
That data, which will be publicly available in 2020, is the result of a cooperative five-year research programme that involved NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the French Aerospace Lab (ONERA), and several U.S. universities.
The key to this new set of data, which offers a better understanding of ice formation and its effects on an airplane, is the advent of using 3D printing as a research tool.
Landing and Impact Testing: NASA researchers, along with Federal Aviation Administration, intentionally crashed a Fokker F-28 mid-size transport aircraft during 2019 to help better understand the forces exerted on the human body from an explosion underneath a vehicle. Hoisted more than 150 feet into the air, the 33,000-pound Fokker swayed in the wind as hundreds gathered and waited for the big drop. This is the largest airframe ever dropped at Langley’s gantry and excitement was ripe in the hot afternoon.
After months, weeks, days and now hours of preparation, the loud pop of pyrotechnic cutters silenced the observing crowd. The Fokker swung forward, hurtling toward its target of packed earth and with an even louder bang, crashed successfully as intended. The wings of the aircraft broke off while dust and dirt were kicked into the air.
“It’s a severe crash,” said Joseph Pellettiere, chief of crash dynamics for the FAA. “Severe, but survivable.”
This test was one in a series of tests on which NASA and the FAA have partnered.
“The FAA is in the process of establishing new guidelines for transport-category aircraft and their crash-worthiness,” said Martin Annett, structural dynamics branch head at Langley. “Previously NASA Langley assisted the FAA in gathering data from purely vertical drops of fuselage sections. The previous data combined with the data generated from this horizontal and vertical momentum crash test will play a role in establishing what the FAA guidelines on crash-worthiness should be.”
Airspace Technology Demonstration: NASA during 2019 logged the second successful year of a three-year exercise in Charlotte, North Carolina known as Airspace Technology Demonstration-2. The focus of the research is on enabling the coordination of schedules among those who manage the movement of aircraft on the ground, from airport gate to takeoff. The big idea is to more reliably predict and schedule the time when aircraft are pushed back from their gates so they can get to the runway and take off without pausing to sit on an airport taxiway, waiting their turn in line while burning fuel and passengers’ patience.
Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System: During 2019, the NASA-developed technology behind the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System won aviation’s highest award, the Collier Trophy, for its life-saving impact on flight. The Auto GCAS Team is a partnership among the U.S. Air Force led by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the F-35 programme; the Office of the Secretary of Defence, guided by the Defence Safety Oversight Council; Lockheed Martin led by the Advanced Development Programmes; and NASA led by Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. Testing of the wing that will be integrated into the final configuration of the X-57 Maxwell all-electric aircraft was completed during 2019.
The technology behind the Auto GCAS allows the software system to take over the controls of an aircraft upon determining ground collision is imminent. The system warns the pilot, and if no action is taken, it locks the controls and performs an automatic recovery manoeuvre, returning full control back to the pilot once the aircraft has cleared the near terrain. The F-16 aircraft were the first to have the system installed, which has saved eight pilots in the 4.5 years since it was fielded.
Detect and Avoid and Command and Control Systems: NASA during 2019 signed contracts with three industry partners in a bid to demonstrate progress in the use and eventual certification of Detect and Avoid and Command and Control systems critical to the safe operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System.
The two key systems that are the focus of the demonstration that will hopefully assist the Federal Aviation Administration toward setting standards for certification include Detect and Avoid (DAA) and Command and Control (C2).
DAA involves employing sensors of some type (such as radar) to sense if the aircraft is flying too close to an object (such as a tall building) and then takes steps to fly away from the potential danger.
C2 involves technology that ensures the unmanned aircraft remains in constant, secure contact via radio with ground-based pilots and air traffic control – but also knows what to do on its own to stay safe in case that signal is lost.
Blazing New Trails in Aviation
What sets the new generation of aircraft apart from its predecessors are innovations in both materials and systems – innovations that pose both opportunities and challenges. There is little doubt that evolving technologies, electric propulsion, and smart new materials will bring on further opportunities, upgrades, and challenges.
While current propulsion technologies are still wedded to the consumption of fossil fuels, over coming years we will see the increasing electrification of aircraft. And this poses another set of challenges and opportunities for the sector – which can be divided into two strands: more-electric aircraft, for example, the 787 or A350 compared with previous-generation wide-bodies, and electrically-powered aircraft. Secondly, Hydraulic and pneumatic systems – such as those for actuation or air conditioning – are already being replaced by electrical systems to save weight and improve reliability.
Aviation is changing like never before as NASA leads a technological revolution, enabling supersonic aircraft to fly overland, introducing all electric air planes that are way superior to conventional ones, among other things. Flying taxis, drones delivering goods and services, innovations that make boarding an aircraft less time consuming and cut the carbon footprint, all of which opens to a new horizon in aviation, thanks to the painstaking work by NASA.
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