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On Feb. 25, Representatives Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) and Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) introduced H.R.1339, the Advanced Air Mobility Coordination and Leadership Act, in the US House of Representatives.
April 19, 2021 — a day for the record books: the successful first flight of an aircraft on another planet. Lifting off from the surface of Mars to a modest 10 ft (3 m), NASA’s diminutive Ingenuity helicopter made a humble start that holds huge significance for future flights.
This year, the US Air Force’s Agility Prime initiative will help finance the flight test and certification efforts of about 20 different eVTOL aircraft participating in its “Air Race to Certification” program.
NASA announced on Nov. 16 that Wisk and Alaka’i Technologies signed information exchange agreements with NASA this year, joining 17 companies who were announced in March (see “NASA’s National Campaign,” Vertiflite, May/June 2020). The two new vehicle partners are now preparing for the first National Campaign (NC-1) beginning in 2022, with the intent to assess operational safety scenarios focused on their respective automation and vehicle designs.
NASA and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been hosting a series of workshops to provide information on test and evaluation requirements, vehicle safety system development, and certification challenges for eVTOL aircraft.
The senior leadership of the United States Air Force witnessed their first flight of an electric powered VTOL aircraft on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, when LIFT Aircraft gave a demonstration of its single-seat HEXA aircraft on the parade ground of Camp Mabry near downtown Austin, Texas.
On Aug. 20, 2020, the three top leaders of the United States Air Force had their first opportunity to see an electric powered vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in flight during a visit to headquarters of the Air Force’s innovation hub, AFWERX, in Austin, Texas.
On Aug. 14, 2020, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released its FY 2022 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities policy memorandum. Like last year's memo, eVTOL is again highlighted as a research priority. This 10-page memorandum (M-20-29) emphasizes programs the Administration sees as priorities as agencies develop their fiscal year 2022 budget proposals.
In 2015, NASA began a four-year project to provide guidance for low-altitude (under 500 ft/150 m) air traffic management for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). This UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project set out to define all aspects of lowaltitude traffic management including airspace management and geo-fencing, weather and wind, predict and manage congestion, terrain and man-made objects and safe separation. The program provided problem sets with increasing complexity, from unpopulated land (UTM-1) to autonomous, beyond visual line-ofsight, urban operations (UTM-4).
The Air Force marked the 116th anniversary of the Dec. 17, 1903, Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk by issuing a request for information (RFI) aimed at helping foster a new powered flight revolution — electric or hybrid electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft — eventually self-flying.
