As the aviation industry works to develop new air taxis and other electric aircraft made from innovative, lightweight materials, there’s a growing need to understand how those materials behave under impact. That’s why NASA is investigating potential air taxi materials and designs that could best protect passengers in the event of a crash. On June … Read more
In a stretch of California’s Mojave Desert, NASA conducted a full-scale “dress rehearsal” to prepare how it will measure the noise generated by the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft. The team behind the successful test flight series operates under NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project. Beginning June 3 and concluding this week, researchers conducted a dry … Read more
NASA engineers are exploring how the technology used in existing cellphone networks could support the next generation of aviation. In April and May, researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland built two specialized radio systems to study how well fifth-generation cellular network technology, known as 5G, can handle the demands of air taxi communications. … Read more
NASA’s Athena Economical Payload Integration Cost mission, or Athena EPIC, is a test launch for an innovative, scalable space vehicle design to support future missions. The small satellite platform is engineered to share resources among the payloads onboard by managing routine functions so the individual payloads don’t have to. This technology results in lower costs … Read more
NASA/Jacob Shaw NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft has officially begun taxi tests, marking the first time this one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft has moved under its own power. NASA test pilot Nils Larson and the X-59 team, made up of NASA and contractor Lockheed Martin personnel, completed the aircraft’s first low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air … Read more
NASA’s latest open Software Catalog, released Wednesday, offers more than 1,200 downloadable codes developed by agency engineers that could enable faster solutions to energize the space economy and stimulate American ingenuity. The catalog is part of NASA’s effort to place advanced technologies, including agency software, into the hands of businesses, researchers, and entrepreneurs to foster … Read more
Since launching in 2023, NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution mission, or TEMPO, has been measuring the quality of the air we breathe from 22,000 miles above the ground. June 19 marked the successful completion of TEMPO’s 20-month-long initial prime mission, and based on the quality of measurements to date, the mission has been extended … Read more
Many of us grew up using paint-by-number sets to create beautiful color pictures. For years now, NASA engineers studying aircraft and rocket designs in wind tunnels have flipped that childhood pastime, using computers to generate images from “numbers-by-paint” – pressure sensitive paint (PSP), that is. Now, advances in the use of high-speed cameras, supercomputers, and … Read more
NASA will soon launch a one-of-a-kind instrument, called Arcstone, to improve the quality of data from Earth-viewing sensors in orbit. In this technology demonstration, the mission will measure sunlight reflected from the Moon— a technique called lunar calibration. Such measurements of lunar spectral reflectance can ultimately be used to set a high-accuracy, universal standard for … Read more
A NASA team specializing in collecting imagery-based engineering datasets from spacecraft during launch and reentry is supporting a European aerospace company’s upcoming mission to return a subscale demonstration capsule from space. NASA’s Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team supports a broad range of mission needs across the agency, including Artemis, science missions like OSIRIS-REx (Origins, … Read more