26 Feb 2021
NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign has made significant progress toward planning vehicle flight demonstrations and simulations through industry partnerships.
Several industry partners joined the National Campaign in 2020 through collaborative opportunities, including three innovative vehicle partners to help integrate AAM vehicles into the National Airspace System alongside the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
These companies were selected through a competitive announcement of collaborative opportunity process, or ACO1, focused on developmental testing and information exchanges with a broad range of companies.
NASA’s second announcement of collaborative opportunity, or ACO2, was released Feb. 3 for industry to apply to participate in the first full phase of testing for the National Campaign, or NC-1. This includes flight, airspace, and operations support for infrastructure testing planned through 2022.
A third ACO was released Feb. 24 for industry to apply to partner across a number of research, demonstration, and evaluation activities to support progress of the AAM mission beyond NC-1. This includes information exchange for NC-2 planned for 2024 as well as other research areas such as vehicle automation, crash safety, communications, and community integration, which are critical to the success of the AAM mission.
Companies looking to participate in either phase of the National Campaign and NASA’s AAM research portfolio can apply to be chosen for a non-reimbursable umbrella space act agreement, where the partner works alongside NASA for a mutually beneficial opportunity assuming their own costs to participate. Once the solicitations close, participants will be chosen in spring 2021.
The National Campaign ACO2 will consider four types of partners to participate. These include U.S. and international vehicle companies who plan to fly in the NC-1, U.S. airspace companies who plan to run airspace simulations for NC-1, and AAM infrastructure companies who will provide services, hardware and/or software for NC-1 flight support in 2022.
The AAM research focused ACO3 includes opportunities for diverse partnerships with vehicle manufacturers, automation subsystem developers, and community-based organizations.
Each new vehicle, airspace service provider and operational use case added for testing gives the AAM National Campaign the opportunity to continue its mission of engaging with diverse vehicle developers and manufacturers in emerging aviation markets for personal, passenger and cargo transportation in urban, suburban, rural, and regional environments.
NASA’s vision for Advanced Air Mobility is to help create safe, sustainable, accessible, and affordable aviation for a number of uses at the local and regional level. NASA’s role is to gather research to guide industry toward building a safe and scalable transportation system for Advanced Air Mobility. A strong partnership between industry, local leaders and the FAA is essential to the success of the National Campaign.