Thirteen companies and one university have signed agreements with NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) project’s National Campaign to continue work towards integrating air taxis, cargo delivery aircraft and other new air vehicle concepts into the national airspace system.

Joby Aviation’s all-electric prototype.

The partners will participate in the first full phase of testing of the National Campaign (NC-1) by flying their innovative vehicles, developing future airspace system capabilities, or providing key infrastructure related capabilities. NC-1 will include flight demonstrations and simulations at test sites around the country over several months. The following industry partners were chosen:

• Flight partners for demonstrations: Reliable Robotics Corporation and continued work with Wisk Aero LLC and Joby Aviation.

• Infrastructure partners for demonstrations: AURA Network Systems, Raytheon Company, Robust Analytics Inc., SkyGrid, and The University of North Texas. AURA was also chosen for additional communications, navigation, and surveillance flight testing activities.

• Airspace partners for simulations: ANRA Technologies Inc., ARINC Incorporated, Avision Inc., Metron Aviation Inc., OneSky Systems Inc., SkyGrid, and Unmanned Experts Inc.

Reliable Robotics demonstrates remotely operated aircraft.

These partners were chosen for a non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement to work alongside NASA in a mutually beneficial opportunity.

Wisk Aero’s self-flying eVTOL aircraft system.

After solicitations opened in February, several local governments across the US also signed agreements in May to help accelerate Advanced Air Mobility. Additional partnerships are anticipated with industry in support of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility initiatives.

Background. NASA’s vision for the Advanced Air Mobility Mission is that it:

• Is safe, sustainable, accessible, and affordable aviation for transformational local and intraregional missions.

• Includes the transportation passengers and cargo as well as aerial work missions, such as infrastructure inspection or search and rescue operations.

• Includes local missions of about 50-mile radius in rural or urban areas, and intraregional missions of up to a few hundred miles that occur between urban areas, between rural areas, or between rural and urban areas.

The AAM National Campaign series is designed to:

• Promote public confidence in AAM safety.

• Give prospective vehicle manufacturers and operators, as well as prospective airspace service providers, insights into the evolving regulatory and operational environment.

• Facilitate community-wide learning while capturing the public’s imagination.

The AAM National Campaign will bring together aircraft manufacturers and airspace service providers to identify maturity levels for vehicle performance, safety assurance, airspace interoperability, etc., and to develop and demonstrate integrated solutions for civil use.

Working with industry partners, NASA will develop testing scenarios that:

• Address key safety and integration barriers across AAM vehicle and airspace systems.

• Emphasize critical operational challenges towards commercial viability and public confidence in AAM operations.

• Identify requirements for AAM system development.

The first set of AAM National Campaign tests, NC-1, will enable participants to demonstrate integrated operations in relevant scenarios that include:

• Two-way network flight plan communications.

• Beyond visual line-of-sight operations.

• Simulated vehicle and operations contingencies.

• Dynamic traffic avoidance and trajectory management.

• Approach and landing to landing areas in the presence of real structures (e.g., buildings in an urban environment) and associated mechanical turbulence.

NC-1 will be based on safety scenarios for initial commercial operations proposed by industry for low-density, low-complexity environments.