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NASA launches activities for Advanced Air Mobility and prepares ‘dry run’ flight test

NASA has begun flight test activ­i­ties as part of its Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Nation­al Cam­paign, ahead of Joby Avi­a­tion’s pro­to­type eVTOL air­craft being avail­able for devel­op­men­tal tests next year.

The project start­ed with con­nec­tiv­i­ty and infra­struc­ture flight tests with a NASA TG-14 glid­er air­craft, which was con­duct­ed at NASA’s Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter from Sep­tem­ber 30th to Octo­ber 1st.

In addi­tion to assess­ing auto­mat­ic depen­dent sur­veil­lance broad­cast con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the cloud and data pro­cess­ing sys­tem, these flights act­ed as a famil­iari­sa­tion exer­cise for the test pilots who will fly the same routes dur­ing the heli­copter test.

These flight-test­ing series, called the Inte­grat­ed Dry Run Test, will begin in Decem­ber and involve a Bell OH-58C Kiowa heli­copter, which will be pro­vid­ed by Flight Research Inc, of Mojave, Cal­i­for­nia. It will be used as a ‘sur­ro­gate UAM’ to devel­op a data base­line for future indus­try part­ner­ship flight test­ing.

The project describes the process as ‘anchor and evolve’ – the heli­copter rep­re­sents the anchor of cur­rent FAA stan­dards required for heli­copters to fly today. Test­ing with indus­try will then evolve from these stan­dards to mim­ic what an eVTOL air­craft will need to safe­ly fly.

Dur­ing the flight test­ing, test pilots will be fly­ing the heli­copter in ways based on how the project thinks eVTOLs will fly in the future. This includes fly­ing ter­mi­nal oper­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tive real-time eVTOL flight plans and tra­jec­to­ries while test­ing inter­ac­tions with a third-par­ty air­space ser­vice provider.

Dave Web­ber, FAA research flight test engi­neer and vehi­cle char­ac­ter­is­tics prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for this project, said: “The indus­try and world will see we are not cre­at­ing some­thing new; we are evolv­ing stan­dards so urban air mobil­i­ty can become a viable mar­ket.”

The Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Nation­al Cam­paign project con­duct­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty and infra­struc­ture flight tests with a NASA TG 14 glid­er air­craft at NASAs Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter Sept 30 Oct 1 2020 Cred­it NASA Pho­to Ken Ulbrich

The data col­lect­ed from the three series of flight tests at NASA’s Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter in Cal­i­for­nia will be look­ing at over­all chal­lenges the urban envi­ron­ment will present for future vehi­cles.

Includ­ed in this analy­sis are vehi­cle char­ac­ter­is­tics, the inter­ac­tions with a third-par­ty air­space ser­vice provider, wind con­di­tions, flight path angles, heli­ports, ver­ti­ports, cur­rent FAA tools, and nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems. This flight test series will con­tin­ue into ear­ly 2021.

Starr Ginn, AAM Nation­al Cam­paign lead, said: “The dry run is NASA test­ing our flight test infra­struc­ture which con­sists of range safe­ty, instru­men­ta­tion, air­space inte­gra­tion and data col­lec­tion. As the NASA sub­sys­tems mature, they will be test­ed at dif­fer­ent phas­es of the dry run series where the final test in March will test the full end-to-end sys­tem.”

The pur­pose of the Nation­al Cam­paign (NC) is to even­tu­al­ly test vehi­cles and UAM air­space providers from var­i­ous com­pa­nies. Anoth­er focus is deter­min­ing how cities, air­ports and over­all infra­struc­ture can sup­port this type of pas­sen­ger trans­port and car­go deliv­ery.

Over the next decade, the Nation­al Cam­paign will be research­ing, exe­cut­ing flight demon­stra­tions, and estab­lish­ing part­ner­ships for urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) vehi­cles, or eVTOL vehi­cles, in order to safe­ly enable even­tu­al inte­gra­tion with exist­ing air traf­fic.

NASA and the FAA intend to col­lab­o­rate through­out all stages of the Nation­al Cam­paign, from plan­ning and sce­nario val­i­da­tion to exe­cu­tion of flight demon­stra­tions.

The data and lessons learned from the Nation­al Cam­paign will help inform FAA poli­cies and pro­ce­dures that indus­try will fol­low to fly these var­i­ous sized vehi­cles and diverse mis­sions on a dai­ly basis.

Ginn added: “The Nation­al Cam­paign is try­ing to ver­i­fy the gaps in the cur­rent FAA stan­dards that scal­ing eVTOLs oper­a­tions can’t yet meet. We are putting these vehi­cles through the FAA stan­dards for oper­a­tions that cur­rent­ly exist. That is our mea­sur­ing stick.”

The Devel­op­men­tal Test with part­ner Joby Avi­a­tion will include activ­i­ties to pre­pare for NC‑1 such as design­ing flight sce­nar­ios for the par­tic­i­pants to fly, exer­cis­ing range deploy­ment and data col­lec­tion pro­to­cols.

For NC‑1, indus­try part­ners will focus on demon­strat­ing inte­grat­ed oper­a­tions through flight activ­i­ties with vehi­cles and third-par­ty air­space ser­vice providers at var­i­ous loca­tions in the nation­al air­space sys­tem around the coun­try.

Ver­ti­ports and heli­pads were paint­ed Oct 614 2020 at NASAs Arm­strong Flight Research Cen­ter to sup­port future flight test­ing for the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty projects Nation­al Cam­paign Cred­its NASA Pho­to Ken Ulbrich

The inte­grat­ed oper­a­tions will allow col­lec­tion of data from both the vehi­cle and air­space ser­vice providers as the air­craft per­forms approach­es and depar­tures in a num­ber of con­di­tions.

In addi­tion, these demon­stra­tions will enable com­mu­ni­ties and local gov­ern­ments to fur­ther under­stand these oper­a­tions through assess­ment of the noise foot­print of these new vehi­cles.  

This project includes mem­bers from three NASA aero­nau­tics cen­ters includ­ing Arm­strong and Ames Research Cen­ter in Cal­i­for­nia and Lan­g­ley Research Cen­ter in Vir­ginia with lead­er­ship by NASA’s Aero­nau­tics Research Mis­sion Direc­torate.

NASA’s vision for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty is to help cre­ate safe, sus­tain­able, acces­si­ble, and afford­able avi­a­tion for a num­ber of uses at the local and region­al lev­el.

To learn more about the Nation­al Cam­paign (for­mer­ly the Grand Chal­lenge), and cur­rent indus­try par­tic­i­pants, click here.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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