December 2020
The Air Traffic Management-eXploration (ATM-X) Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Experiment 2 (X2) Team won an Ames Honor Award for Group/Team for their exceptional leadership in defining and guiding the research and development of a generational new air transportation system for urban metropolitan areas. The X2 team developed an airspace management system that utilized capabilities from UTM TCL-4, ATM-X Testbed, and UAM airspace management services for scheduling and separation. A series of simulations were completed with an industry partner, Uber, which culminated in essential data and critical insights for accelerating the national initiative for safe and efficient UAS operations in urban environments.
The award nomination states, “These achievements were only possible because of the X2 team’s exceptional dedication and extraordinary fortitude. The team needed to overcome significant challenges along the way to X2. Most notably, the 35-day federal government shutdown in December 2018 and January 2019 significantly delayed the design and development effort of the X2 system and research experiment. Making up for all of the lost time required exceptional dedication by the X2 team – which they demonstrated repeatedly on the path to the X2 engineering simulations, including working many long nights and weekends – to finish by the original end date of September 2020 for successful on-time achievement of an ATM-X project milestone and on-time delivery to the NASA AAM National Campaign team for use in live flight activities with UAM aircraft. The NASA ATM-X UAM X2 team has helped establish the United States as the world leader in Urban Air Mobility.”
Team included NAMS staff from USRA, Acima, Crown, Flight Research Associates (part of NAMS at the time), Moffett Technologies Inc, and Optimal Synthesis Inc supported the UAM X2 experiment