High school students in Indiana are contributing to NASA’s groundbreaking research to develop quieter, more fuel-efficient aircraft engines. Their learning experience is a collaboration between aircraft noise researchers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and educators from the University of Notre Dame’s Turbomachinery Laboratory. The collaboration aims to encourage students’ interest in science, technology, … Read more
On Oct. 22, 2024, the latest iteration of an atmospheric probe developed by researchers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, successfully completed a test flight. Building on NASA 1960s research on lifting body aircraft, which use the aircraft’s shape for lift instead of wings, the concept could offer future scientists a potentially better … Read more
NASA/Steve Parcel The most effective way to prove a new idea is to start small, test, learn, and test again. A team of researchers developing an atmospheric probe at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, are taking that approach. The concept could offer future scientists a potentially better and more economical way to … Read more
NASA/Quincy Eggert Upside down can be right side up. That’s what NASA researchers determined for tests of an efficient wing concept that could be part of the agency’s answer to making future aircraft sustainable. Research from NASA’s Advanced Air Transport Technology project involving a 10-foot model could help NASA engineers validate the concept of the … Read more
As NASA continues cutting-edge aeronautics research, the agency also is taking steps to make sure the benefits from these diverse technologies are greater than the sum of their parts. To tackle that challenge, NASA is using Model-Based Systems Analysis and Engineering (MBSAE). This type of engineering digitally simulates how multiple technologies could best work together … Read more
NASA’s X-66 aircraft, the centerpiece of its Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is taking the term “sustainable” to heart by reusing an old MD-90 cockpit as a base for its new X-66 simulator. When airplanes are retired, they often wind up in “boneyards” — storage fields where they spend years being picked over for parts by … Read more
A new custom virtual reality flight simulator built by NASA researchers will allow them to explore how passengers experience air taxi rides and collect data that will help designers create new aircraft with passenger comfort in mind. Wayne Ringelberg, a test pilot at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, recently completed a series … Read more
NASA and its international partners are using the same generically shaped wing design to create physical and digital research models to better understand how air moves around an aircraft during takeoff and landing. Various organizations are doing computer modeling with computational tools and conducting wind tunnel tests using the same High Lift Common Research Model … Read more
NASA has created a new digital modelling tool for aeronautical engineers to innovate new aircraft designs, building on decades of experience using highly advanced computer code for aviation. Using this tool, researchers can create simulations of conceptual aircraft featuring never-flown technology and receive detailed data about how it would work. Named “Aviary” for enclosures where … Read more
NASA works on projects that often have never been done, or perhaps the way they are being done has never been tried. Living on the edge of innovation requires a high degree of risk. After organizational silence led to the loss of space shuttle Challenger and its crew in 1986, NASA vowed to change the … Read more