Archer Aviation and NASA Sign Space Act Agreement to collaborate on mission-critical eVTOL aircraft technologies

Archer has signed a Space Act Agree­ment with the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA), which is focused on ensur­ing the US leads the world in the next gen­er­a­tion of air trans­porta­tion.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will kick off with an ini­tial project focused on study­ing high-per­for­mance bat­tery cells and safe­ty test­ing tar­get­ed for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) and space appli­ca­tions.

Archer believes while the sup­ply chain for elec­tric vehi­cles in the U.S. is matur­ing, the sup­ply chain for elec­tric air­craft remains nascent not just in the U.S., but glob­al­ly. This test­ing will help push progress for­ward, while NASA’s goal is to test Archer’s bat­tery cell and sys­tem design and share the results to push the entire AAM indus­try for­ward.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, said: “We’re extreme­ly proud to part­ner with NASA, who has pio­neered the eVTOL indus­try over the last three plus decades, in sup­port of our col­lec­tive mis­sion to ensure U.S. lead­er­ship in aero­space con­tin­ues for decades to come.

“Many coun­tries around the world are chal­leng­ing the U.S. in this new era of flight and our coun­try is at risk of los­ing its glob­al lead­er­ship posi­tion unless we work togeth­er, gov­ern­ment and indus­try, to ensure we seize the moment and pio­neer this new era of avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which stands to ben­e­fit all Amer­i­cans.”

Matur­ing bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy is antic­i­pat­ed to be a key enabling fac­tor for the mass pro­duc­tion and adop­tion of elec­tric avi­a­tion.

Archer plans to deliv­er a high-per­form­ing bat­tery pack with lead­ing lev­els of safe­ty to its Mid­night elec­tric air taxi, val­i­dat­ing that these cells are tai­lor made for aero­space appli­ca­tions, includ­ing eVTOL, elec­tric con­ven­tion­al take off and land­ing (eCTOL) air­craft and poten­tial usage in space.

As part of the joint efforts around bat­tery char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, NASA and Archer will focus on fur­ther test­ing the safe­ty, ener­gy and pow­er per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ties of the bat­tery cells.

Tests will be per­formed using one of the most advanced high speed X‑ray facil­i­ties in the world, the Euro­pean Syn­chro­tron Radi­a­tion Facil­i­ty (ESRF), to under­stand how the cells func­tion dur­ing extreme abuse cas­es.

Archer has cho­sen these cells to pow­er the pro­pri­etary elec­tric pow­er­train sys­tem Archer has designed, devel­oped and is begin­ning to mass man­u­fac­ture for its pro­duc­tion elec­tric air taxi, Mid­night.

The bat­tery cell form fac­tor cho­sen by Archer, a cylin­dri­cal cell, has a track record of safe­ty, per­for­mance and scal­a­bil­i­ty proven through decades of vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing, deployed across many appli­ca­tions glob­al­ly, includ­ing in mil­lions of elec­tric vehi­cles.