THE NASA VIEW ON URBAN AIR MOBILITY

A good summary from 09/19 on how NASA, and in partsees the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) market developing. The video includes:

• In-flight footage of eVTOL aircraft including Wisk's Cora, the Boeing NeXT eVTOL demonstrator, Airbus' Vahana, Volocopter's VoloCity and the Lilium Jet

• Concept video from Uber Elevate and of eViation's Alice and the Ray VTOL concept

• Discussion of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM)

• Mention of the NASA UAM Grand Challenge which announced 17 commercial participants this week

The five pillars where technical progress needs to be made, as NASA see it, are:

1. Vehicle design - clarifying NASA won't be building an aircraft themselves but providing technical leadership on areas where

2. Piloting - looking at the pathways towards automation

3. Airspace Architecture - integrating UAM & UTM into the existing US national airspace system

4. Real-time Operation of Airspace - to manage increased traffic levels and use automation to augment the work of human air traffic controllers

5. Community Integration - looking at how to add 1000s of additional flights per hour over urban areas whilst minimising auditory and visual noise

We hear from experts including:

• Dr Michael Patteron - Aerospace Technologist at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC)

• Ken Goodrich - Senior Research Engineer at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC)

• Dr Jaiwon Shin - Associate Administrator at NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD)

• James Grimsley - President and CEO of Design Intelligence Incorporated

• Adrienne Lindgren - Urban Aviation Innovation Consultant at WSP

• Nancy Mendonca - Portfolio Manager at NASA, Helicopter Pilot and Deputy - UAM Coordination & Assessment Team

You can read more about some of the top talent from NASA who've moved to industry in our post The NASA Aerospace 'Ninjas' helping Uber Elevate.