Members from NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign team were on site at Joby’s Electric Flight Base located near Big Sur, California, for two weeks completing tests with Joby’s prototype aircraft. With the tests complete, the team is analyzing the collected data.
As announced in a recent news release, NASA’s goal is to collect vehicle performance and acoustic data for use in modeling and simulation of future airspace concepts. After the data is analyzed, the test results will also help identify gaps in current Federal Aviation Administration regulations and policies to help incorporate Advanced Air Mobility aircraft into the National Airspace System.
As the Joby aircraft flew planned test scenarios, the NASA team collected information about how the vehicle moved, how the vehicle sounded, and how the vehicle communicated with controllers.
Analyzing this data will ready the National Campaign to accomplish the first set of campaign tests, known as NC-1, slated for 2022, with more complex flight scenarios and other industry vehicles.
When fully integrated into the national airspace, AAM will provide an efficient and affordable system for passenger and cargo transportation, and other applications in the public interest. This system could include aircraft like package delivery drones, air taxis and medical transport vehicles.
