NASA Prepares For The Launch Of The First All-Electric X-Plane

NASA is preparing for its important project in the Armstrong Flight Research Center: X-57 Mod II, which is the first fully electric experimental aircraft (or X-plane) that NASA will fly in the near future. The plane is one of the experimental aircraft that was created for various technologies testing. With the target of developing the electric aircraft business and sharing its experiences, the American agency intends to put the aircraft's electric propulsion system into the test. 

As the preparations for the next stages of the project, grounds experiments on Mod II including taxi tests and more importantly, flight tests, will soon be performed for review. The exact schedule for testing purposes has not been determined, yet the aircraft's' configurations for Mod III and Mod IV will have different wings as compared to the ordinary iteration. And as the X-plane test takes off, it will mark a significant historical event as the crewed X-plane for the first time in two decades.

Tom Rigney, the manager behind the X-57 project, again emphasized the significance of the delivery of the X-57 Mod II to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California and expressed the team's motivation to commence essential ground tests for the integrated system of electric propulsion. He believed that such efforts will guarantee the flight-ready state of the aircraft. Also, he mentioned an upcoming opportunity to speak about the invaluable lessons during flight-testing progress, as well as a growing business for electric planes in the future. 

NASA is planning for a sharing about the results obtained from the tests, electric propulsion system as well as the whole airworthiness process to industry agencies, and regulatory bodies. The achievement will pave the way for setting up new standards, designing practices for the development of electric aerial transportation, including inventions such as "flying cars," a form of urban air travel, electric vertical take-off or solutions for short-distances landings.