Home /   News /   Aeronautics: Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) North Texas Flight Test Completed

Aeronautics: Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) North Texas Flight Test Completed

January 2023

National Campaign (NC) researchers from the NASA AAM Project, along with a nationwide partnership of companies and government agencies, completed a successful live flight test in the first quarter of FY23 of emerging Urban Air Mobility (UAM) technologies. The flight demonstration featured future airspace system automation, including providers of services for UAM, advanced communications infrastructure, a surrogate electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVOL) aircraft, and a simulated air route in the North Texas (NTX) area.

A Bell Textron 407GXi helicopter
A Bell Textron 407GXi helicopter, representing an electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, flies during a NASA-led test on Oct. 10, 2022. This test gathered essential data about how to manage air traffic for high-demand routes that we will see with the addition of Advanced Air Mobility. This flight is part of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign research effort, which partners with companies like Bell and others. (Courtesy of the University of Northern Texas)

 

The flight test not only simulated a potential high-demand route for unmanned, autonomous cargo and passenger-carrying air transports, it also provided vital data for industry standards in airspace management, vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, and autonomous flight operations. A Bell 407GXi helicopter served as the surrogate eVTOL aircraft for the NTX flight test. The helicopter flew a simulated air route between the Alliance Texas Flight Test Center and the University of North Texas Discovery Park. A researcher onboard the helicopter utilized a tablet display which was specifically customized to receive and send pertinent data for overall situational awareness and information exchange. The route was flown multiple times and led to valuable lessons on the required information to exchange between the ground traffic management system and air vehicle.

The future of airspace system automation and advanced communications infrastructure capabilities were developed by NTX Cohort partners which included representatives from industry, universities, and government agencies who have been collaborating with NASA for the past few years on UAM simulations. The NASA UAM team designed the simulated air route. The NAMS team provided support for customizing the UAM airspace adaption and managing the UAM discovery and authentication services which were crucial to the development and testing of the NTX Cohort capabilities. NAMS staff also provided project management support for the NASA representative on the NTX Cohort Team.

The NTX Cohort team presented an outbrief of their research to NASA and NC partners in January. The flight terst report documenting NTX Cohort research and lessons learned will be completed in the second quarter of FY23.

NASA recently released a web feature about the flight test on nasa.gov, NASA Goes Live with Surrogate eVTOL Tests in Texas.

NTX cohort members