Flying with NASA

Before you even step onto an airplane, NASA is with you when you fly.

Whether your trip is for business or pleasure, NASA flight research, technology, and partnerships travel with you. Nearly every aspect of air travel is rooted in the work of the Agency. The U.S. government began the study of aeronautics with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1915, with the goal being to better understand the physics and aerodynamics of flight. This effort was primarily inspired by “being outpaced during World War I in terms of fighter aircraft,” according to Karen Rugg, Aeronautics Mission Directorate (ARMD) program specialist.

“Aeronautics is in the genealogical tree—in the DNA of NASA—as much as NASA is in the DNA of aircraft and aviation today,” says Rugg. “That’s our foundational work.”

The researchers and facilities proved this approach worked well for advancing aerospace technology. So when the nation decided to take on space travel, NACA was absorbed into the National Aeronautics and Space Agency.

How exactly is NASA with you when you fly?

Cut into concrete surfaces by diamond blades, safety grooving increases traction on road and runways, reducing hydroplaning and skidding. NASA first researched this technique to keep aircraft, including the returning space shuttle, safe as they landed. (Image Credit: Government of Brazil, CC BY 3.0)

 At the Airport

What the ground crews see every day but passengers rarely notice are the grooves cut into the runways to channel water off the tarmac. During the 1960s, NASA researchers developed a process for cutting transverse grooves into runways. And in the 1980s, NASA performed more than 1,000 test runs of aircraft and ground vehicles, proving that grooved runway surfaces provide greater friction/traction. This makes takeoff, landing, and moving planes to and from the terminal much safer.

In early 2012 at the North Texas Research Station lab, NASA and FAA traffic management coordinators review the PDRC system before a full operational evaluation to follow a few months later. (Image Credit: NASA)

Taxiing

Watching other planes outside the window as your aircraft moves to the runway might seem just like watching cars move around a parking lot, only bigger. But that movement requires careful coordination, and one component of this is the traffic management software NASA is currently testing that forecasts air traffic arrivals. After determining the airport arrival rate, which is the number of aircraft that can land every hour, the program compares planes in the sky and awaiting departures to determine when aircraft will be allowed to take off and land.

Visualization of the flow of NASA’s modified design of a complete DJI Phantom 3 quadcopter configuration in hover. (Image Credit: Patricia Ventura Diaz, NASA/Ames)

Taking Off

The only way to get a 900,000-pound airplane off the ground is with a serious amount of lift, the aerodynamic force that causes objects to rise into the air. The best way to create lift is to study how the plane moves through the air. Because planes are expensive to build, NASA developed sophisticated software to accurately predict the flow of fluids, such as air moving over an aircraft. That code and research process became computational fluid dynamics, which is now used to develop and study new aircraft designs.

The F-8 Digital Fly-By-Wire flight research project validated the principal concepts of all-electric flight control systems now used on nearly all modern high-performance aircraft and on military and civilian transports. (Image Credit: NASA)

Reaching Cruising Altitude

Your pilot must execute a complex sequence of adjustments using multiple controls throughout the flight to maintain the intended flight pattern. Modern aircraft use what’s known as a fly-by-wire system, developed and tested at NASA, that uses a digital computer and electrical wires to collect sensor data from the pilot’s controls and relay those signals to move the aircraft’s control surfaces accordingly. New commercial and military aircraft now control the movement of flaps, rudder, and other surfaces with fly-by-wire.

Pilots hang on in the cockpit as the 737 aircraft is about to enter a microburst wind shear cell in 1992. (Image Credit: NASA)

During Beverage Service

Airplanes are able to maintain a smooth flight because of sensors that help detect changes in the wind. A comprehensive research program led by NASA aeronautics researchers identified the characteristics of dangerous shifts in wind patterns, called wind shear, that have the strength to push a plane off course. Developing and validating technologies that can predict wind shear severity while in flight helps pilots control the aircraft.

According to industry, since first introduced to fleets, NASA-developed winglets have saved airlines approximately 4 billion gallons of jet fuel. (Image Credit: NASA)

While You Doze

Your airplane zips along efficiently and more economically thanks to those little vertical fins at the end of the wings—winglets. When oil prices skyrocketed in the 1970s and 1980s, airlines had to quickly figure out ways to use less fuel. So, NASA came up with a relatively easy fix to reduce the drag created by the tips of airplane wings. Vertical extensions attached to wing tips helped increase the range of the aircraft and decrease fuel consumption. An unexpected bonus was a slight reduction in noise inside the cabin.

NASA’s testing facility simulates a surface traffic control tower where this and other systems are tested. (Image Credit: NASA)

Landing

Anyone who has been stuck in a holding pattern knows that each airplane has to wait its turn to land. Coordinating the movement of planes on the ground and in the air is extremely difficult, so to make air travel safer, NASA collaborated with the Federal Aviation Administration to develop surface traffic management systems. The program provides controllers with data to know when aircraft arrive on the ground or at the gate, making aircraft movements more predictable.

Honeywell's uncertified research engine installed in NASA Glenn's Propulsion Systems Laboratory. (Image Credit: NASA)

Smelling the Roses

Once you reach your destination, there will be significantly less pollution in the air because the plane you just flew on produces lower emissions than it did 15 or 20 years ago. NASA Aeronautics’ technologies and knowledge improved aerodynamic and engine performance, leading to airplanes that use less fuel and engines that burn more cleanly. And more improvements are in the making. NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is conducting cutting-edge research into improving engine performance and improve electric propulsion (see “Electrifying Planes”).

“There are always new challenges in aviation.”

“There are always new challenges in aviation. For example, the nation is working to transition our airspace system to satellite-based communication,” says Rugg. “We’re already creating that next round of major contributions to aviation. There are a lot of exciting things happening in the air that will affect all of us in the not-too-distant future.”

Right now NASA is testing a software solution at Charlotte Douglas International Airport that coordinates the schedules between different “drivers” at the airport – the FAA controllers for traffic arriving and departing; the airline controllers for traffic on the airport’s surface. The goal? Get everyone to collaborate by sharing the same information about where an aircraft is, where it needs to be and when it needs to be there. (Video Credit: NASA)

Written by: Margo Pierce

Published by: NASA Technology Innovation, March 2019