• 20 Dec 2020 04:42 PM
• 0

NASA & FAA Push Crashworthiness

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 first workshop (delayed slightly due to the outbreak of COVID-19) was an introduction on April 7. Workshop 2 was held on Oct. 9 (in conjunction with Forum 76), entitled, "Professional Organizations, Stakeholders and Regulatory Approaches for Crashworthiness for eVTOL Vehicles." Slides and video of these original presentations are posted at https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/crashworthiness. Workshop 3 is tentatively planned for Jan. 19, 2021.

NASA has been holding regular virtual meetings as part of its Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Ecosystem Working Groups. On Nov. 17, NASA held an AAM Partnership Strategy meeting, where the agency announced there will be upcoming opportunities for companies to partner for crash testing. These will be non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements between NASA and the crash test partners (US entities only). NASA posted the video recordings of its general session and the breakout on crashworthiness on its new AAM Ecosystem Working Groups Portal at https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/aam-portal under “Meetings Archive.” The Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity to propose for the partnership opportunity is expected to be posted in January 2021.