Published 11/02/2022

NASA's Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign adds new partners

Partners like Overair and Supernal boast composites exploration, expertise in eVTOL developments, joining 30 others taking part in the program’s integrated AAM information exchange efforts.

Edited by: Grace Stubbins

Senior Managing Editor, CompositesWorld and Products Finishing

NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign has signed agreements with four new organizations to exchange information related to the development and testing of vehicles, systems and technology to integrate air taxis, cargo delivery and other advanced aircraft concepts into the National Airspace System (NAS).

The following industry partners have signed Space Act Agreements with NASA for the next phase of the National Campaign:

Electra Aero (Manassas, Va., U.S.);
Overair (Santa Ana, Calif., U.S.) — its Butterfly electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype is integrating a composites-intensive design, using carbon fiber/epoxy prepreg.
Supernal (Washington, D.C., U.S.) — the company’s unveiled eVTOL vehicle cabin concept included a CFRTP material incorporation and a biomimetic design.
Ellis & Associates, a consulting arm of Lacuna Technologies (Palo Alto, Calif., U.S.).

The new partners join more than 30 other vehicle developers (including Joby Aviation and Wisk) infrastructure providers and airspace managers participating in the National Campaign on an ongoing basis. Partners are drawn from across industry, government and academia. Housed in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), the National Campaign has worked with these partners over the past few years to establish a flight test infrastructure, explore future flight path designs and help move technologies such as eVTOL vehicles toward certification and use.

“The National Campaign team is making strides in understanding how the vehicles, infrastructure and airspace will operate in urban, suburban, rural and intra-regional environments, and we are excited to welcome these new partners to the research ecosystem,” Al Capps, AAM National Campaign project acting lead, says. “Each additional research partner and operational flight demonstration helps inform approaches by our partners at the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and the future concept of operations.”

The National Campaign plans to produce data that will assist the FAA in defining regulatory compliance, and prepare both vehicles and airspace for effective and safe commercial operations.

The National Campaign’s ongoing first phase, NC-1, is a series of testing focused on operational safety that integrates efforts in several areas essential to the future of AAM: eVTOL vehicles, automation, airspace, acoustics modeling, concepts of operations, contingencies at all phases of flight and mobile landing surfaces.

The new agreements were made under the National Campaign – 2 Information Exchange Annex, which offered AAM entities an opportunity to begin information exchange with NASA for early preparation for the next phase of National Campaign flight activities, NC-2, planned to occur when NC-1 concludes. NC-2, which is focused on demonstrating integrated automation capabilities and architectures supporting safe and scalable AAM operations, will consist of integrated scenarios through flight test demonstrations and simulations, as well as systems and operations analysis at test sites around the country.

The partners will participate in NC-2 by sharing information about their vehicles, processes, traffic management systems, infrastructure and capabilities, giving NASA early insights into each partner’s capability maturity level and facilitating design, build and test reviews.

By lending NASA’s decades of expertise in aeronautical research and development as well as integrating efforts across the AAM ecosystem, the National Campaign plans to produce data that will assist the FAA in defining regulatory compliance, prepare both vehicles and airspace for effective and safe commercial operations, and ensure U.S. leadership in this growing industry.