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Hawaii’s big island and its two major volcanoes Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa rest under a partly cloudy sky on Feb. 8, 2022, in this view from the International Space Station. Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano had been quiet for nearly 40 years. However, in 2022, the volcano began to stir, showing increased numbers of small earthquakes and subtl...
NASA is taking a leading role to help integrate new types of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft like air taxis and delivery drones into the sky, helping emerging markets to safely develop an air transportation system that moves people and cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation. NASA is working with private sector developers of elec...
Teams at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, recently completed stress testing on the Navy’s F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft from the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in Patuxent River, Maryland. The Super Hornet is seen here in a top view from March 2022 while in a wing loading test configuration at Armstrong. Understanding...
Our Shuttle Carrier Aircraft ferries the Space Shuttle Endeavour over the Johnson Space Center in Houston in this Sept. 20, 2012, image. Endeavour’s end destination was the California Science Center, where it sits on display. The shuttle Endeavour brought the first parts of the International Space Station to space and completed 25 missions. On its final flig...
T-38 planes are a fixture of astronaut training, assisting pilots and mission specialists to think quickly in changing situations. Here, our T-38s fly in formation above the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Launch Pad 39B. The SLS and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission will launch no earlier than Aug. 29, 2022. Astronaut Andrew Morgan posted this ...
The supersonic X-1E research aircraft was the last of NASA’s experimental X-1 series of aircraft. From 1955-1958, it made 26 flights and one captive flight (attached to a carrier aircraft). Research flights took place over what is now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. In this photo from November 2021, the X-1E looks toward...
Before NASA’s quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft takes to the skies, plenty of testing happens to ensure a safe first flight. One part of this safety check is to analyze data collected for the X-59’s flight control system through low-speed wind tunnel tests. The X-59 is central to NASA’s Quesst mission to expand supersonic flight and provide regulators with data...
An Alta-X drone operated by NASA researchers flies over NASA Langley’s City Environment Range Testing for Autonomous Integrated Navigation (CERTAIN) as part of the Advanced Air Mobility project’s High Density Vertiplex (HDV) testing in April 2022. HDV is developing the necessary systems to enable urban drone flights that travel beyond visual sight. Lea...
Evoking the experimental nature of flight testing and the spirit of aeronautical exploration, Quesst is what NASA is calling its mission to enable supersonic air travel over land. This new moniker – complete with an extra “s” to represent “supersonic” – draws its inspiration from NASA’s long legacy of supersonic flight research. Quesst, which rep...
A top view shows the wing loading test configuration of a F/A-18E from the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in Patuxent River, Maryland. While the aircraft was in NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Flight Loads Laboratory in Edwards, California, it underwent the center’s biggest load calibrations tests. That testing was needed before the aircraft coul...