Transforming Airspace: NASA’s ATM‑x Project and the Future of Advanced Air Mobility

eVTOL Insights recent­ly sat down with Sue Kaur and Kurt Swieringa, from NASA’s Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment Explo­ration (ATM‑x) project. Below is a extract of the con­ver­sa­tion, which delved into NASA’s holis­tic vision for dig­i­tal avi­a­tion, the chal­lenges of inte­grat­ing eVTOLs into crowd­ed urban air­space and the col­lab­o­ra­tive ecosys­tem dri­ving air traf­fic management’s next big leap.

You can lis­ten to the full episode here, or on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.

–/

eVTOL Insights: Thanks, Sue and Kurt, for join­ing us. To start, could you give our read­ers a high-lev­el view of what ATM‑x is and its role with­in NASA’s broad­er vision for advanced air mobil­i­ty?

Sue Kaur: “Absolute­ly. The first thing I like to remind every­one is that the first “A” in NASA stands for “Aero­nau­tics,” and ATM‑x, or Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment Explo­ration, is a sweep­ing port­fo­lio of tech­nolo­gies and solu­tions. Our objec­tive is to trans­form the air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem so it can safe­ly accom­mo­date grow­ing demand for air trans­porta­tion, now and in the future.

“That means look­ing at everything—from ground to high-alti­tude oper­a­tions above 60,000 feet. We focus on mod­ern­iz­ing air­port sys­tems, sup­port­ing effi­cient gate-to-gate oper­a­tions, reduc­ing delays, and mak­ing it eas­i­er and safer for peo­ple to trav­el. We’re also look­ing at scal­able drone and remote­ly pilot­ed oper­a­tions, and cat­alyz­ing coop­er­a­tive air­space prac­tices for both crewed and uncrewed vehi­cles. The key is that all these ele­ments must work togeth­er seam­less­ly.”

Kurt Swieringa: “I’d add that inter­op­er­abil­i­ty is cen­tral to our work. We don’t want new air­space oper­a­tions hap­pen­ing in silos. Everything—drones, air taxis, tra­di­tion­al aircraft—needs to inter­act smooth­ly, even with con­cepts and vehi­cles we haven’t imag­ined yet.”

eVTOL Insights: Kurt, inte­grat­ing eVTOL air­craft into exist­ing air­space sounds com­plex. What are the main chal­lenges from NASA’s per­spec­tive?

KS: The big-pic­ture issue is that today’s air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem for air­lines hasn’t fun­da­men­tal­ly changed in decades. Con­trollers still rely heav­i­ly on voice com­mands and hands-on coor­di­na­tion. With urban air mobil­i­ty and eVTOLs, that sim­ply won’t scale.

“We need new, dig­i­tal­ly enabled ways of man­ag­ing traf­fic. Then there’s the fact that the main busi­ness case for eVTOLs is in large cities — which nat­u­ral­ly are next to busy air­ports. Air­space there is already con­gest­ed, and find­ing routes for new flights isn’t as sim­ple as you’d think. Plus, if we want air taxis to be a ser­vice for the mass­es, we’ve got to design safe, scal­able “cor­ri­dors” between ver­ti­ports, sim­i­lar to how we use roads today, but in three dimen­sions.”

eVTOL Insights: How does ATM‑x approach scal­able, auto­mat­ed air traf­fic man­age­ment for urban air mobil­i­ty?

SK: “From a sys­tems engi­neer­ing per­spec­tive, scal­a­bil­i­ty starts with build­ing con­fi­dence in technology—first by ensur­ing each vehi­cle per­forms reli­ably and safe­ly, then plug­ging that tech­nol­o­gy into increas­ing­ly real­is­tic envi­ron­ments.

“At NASA, we move from lab sim­u­la­tions to closed oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments, like our FAA-NASA test site in Dal­las-Fort Worth. We also rec­og­nize that automa­tion is a spec­trum: from zero automa­tion to assis­tive, to super­vised, and final­ly to ful­ly trust­ed auton­o­my. We’re method­i­cal­ly work­ing through each step to achieve that lev­el of trust­ed, seam­less inte­gra­tion.”

KS: “What’s excit­ing with ATM‑x is we’re not just help­ing one com­pa­ny or oper­a­tor get ready—we’re shap­ing the broad­er dig­i­tal ecosys­tem where many com­pa­nies, vehi­cles, and oper­a­tors coor­di­nate safe­ly with both humans and automa­tion.”

eVTOL Insights: What are your thoughts on how ver­ti­ports will inte­grate with today’s air­port infra­struc­ture?

KS: “These urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions can’t dis­rupt exist­ing heavy traf­fic at major air­ports. That means being delib­er­ate about where ver­ti­ports are located—sometimes on air­port prop­er­ty, but pos­si­bly off­set.

“We also have to con­sid­er things like wind direc­tion, which affects approach paths, and social impacts, like min­i­miz­ing noise over neigh­bor­hoods. All those fac­tors have to be bal­anced when design­ing ver­ti­port net­works and pro­ce­dures.

eVTOL Insights: Sue, how is NASA col­lab­o­rat­ing with the FAA, OEMs, and oth­er indus­try part­ners through ATM‑x to ensure glob­al air traf­fic mod­ern­iza­tion aligns?

SK: “NASA acts as a facil­i­ta­tor, bring­ing togeth­er the FAA, pilots, man­u­fac­tur­ers, stan­dards groups—you name it. We pro­vide a plat­form to col­lab­o­rate, break down silos, and objec­tive­ly val­i­date tech­nolo­gies.

“Because we have no com­mer­cial stake, our guid­ance is trust­ed. We sup­port part­ners with our labs and test facil­i­ties, and every­thing we develop—data, reports, software—is pub­lic. Inter­na­tion­al­ly, we work with orga­ni­za­tions like Germany’s DLR and par­tic­i­pate in glob­al forums like ICAO to help har­mo­nize reg­u­la­tions and pro­to­cols world­wide.”

eVTOL Insights: What safe­ty pri­or­i­ties are most crit­i­cal when man­ag­ing mixed traffic—drones, eVTOLs, tra­di­tion­al air­craft?

KS: “Above all, safe sep­a­ra­tion is non-nego­tiable. This involves pro­ce­dur­al lay­ers (assign­ing drones and eVTOLs to spe­cif­ic seg­ments), tech­no­log­i­cal lay­ers (sys­tems like detect-and-avoid or ACAS XR), and dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion-shar­ing.

“We also need robust con­tin­gency man­age­ment for emergencies—like how to repri­or­i­tize air­space if an air­lin­er or eVTOL needs to divert or land unex­pect­ed­ly. These are the press­ing ques­tions we’re tack­ling.

eVTOL Insights: What’s the vision—a ful­ly func­tion­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty ecosystem—look like for the ATM‑x team?

KS: “It depends on con­text. Ear­ly oper­a­tions might look a lot like today’s heli­copter flights. But the mature vision is a scal­able sys­tem with dig­i­tal coor­di­na­tion, safe­ty guardrails, and the capac­i­ty to sup­port inno­va­tion instead of hin­der­ing it. Reduc­ing inte­gra­tion as a source of uncer­tain­ty will accel­er­ate adop­tion.”

SK: “For me, it’s about har­mo­niz­ing all lay­ers of airspace—even as super­son­ic or space oper­a­tions become rou­tine. Ide­al­ly, we’d have auto­mat­ed, real-time data exchange, and dynam­ic tra­jec­to­ry man­age­ment across all stake­hold­ers. And as Kurt not­ed, inte­gra­tion shouldn’t push out cur­rent avi­a­tion operations—backward com­pat­i­bil­i­ty is essen­tial.”

eVTOL Insights: And where do the biggest indus­try gaps remain?

SK: “Dif­fer­ent regions have dif­fer­ent needs, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solu­tion. We need flex­i­ble, tai­lorable tech­nolo­gies. Bridg­ing inno­va­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion is tough—you can’t just swap out lega­cy sys­tems overnight with­out risk­ing dis­rup­tion. We’re invest­ing in both improv­ing exist­ing infra­struc­ture and test­ing new ideas in par­al­lel.”

KS: “Industry’s inno­vat­ing fast, but NASA’s role is to ensure every­one plays well togeth­er in the larg­er ecosys­tem. Val­i­dat­ing assump­tions, cre­at­ing safe­ty stan­dards for AI and con­tin­gency man­age­ment, and nav­i­gat­ing non-avi­a­tion fac­tors like zon­ing and infra­struc­ture are all crit­i­cal.”

eVTOL Insights: Kurt, any tech­ni­cal or reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stones we should watch for in the next few years?

KS: “Def­i­nite­ly: The FAA’s notice of pro­posed rule­mak­ing for beyond visu­al line of sight drone oper­a­tions is huge. The first eVTOL get­ting its type cer­tifi­cate will help oth­ers fol­low. And, fun­da­men­tal­ly, we need a frame­work for cer­ti­fy­ing AI-dri­ven and non-deter­min­is­tic sys­tems.”

eVTOL Insights: Final­ly, what inspired you both to work at NASA on this lead­ing edge of air traf­fic man­age­ment?

SK: “I start­ed through a NASA robot­ics com­pe­ti­tion, but hon­est­ly, it comes from my “vendet­ta” against trans­porta­tion con­ges­tion! As some­one who loves to trav­el, I want safer, more effi­cient avi­a­tion for myself and every­one else. It’s deeply personal—and I love the team and mis­sion.”

KS: “As a kid, I want­ed to fly planes, but as I learned more about automa­tion and engi­neer­ing, I real­ized design­ing the sys­tems was even more excit­ing. I love NASA’s unique, unbi­ased role in shap­ing the industry’s future.”