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Active TRL 4 (started at 3, targeting 6)
There is an ongoing need to accommodate new types of aircraft and missions seeking to use the airspace in a non-traditional way. These missions include small uncrewed aircraft Systems (UAS) performing infrastructure inspections and delivering goods, electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles carrying passengers while remotely piloted, and high-altitude long-endurance aircraft providing communications services loitering in the stratosphere. NASA has been performing research and development to meet this need in coordination with the FAA and stakeholder communities, and successfully demonstrated the feasibility of safe, efficient, and scalable operations of small UAS under 400 feet. To enable small UAS operations in the low altitudes where the FAA air traffic service is not provided, NASA introduced a new air traffic management (ATM) architecture that utilizes industry’s ability to supply services under the FAA’s regulatory authority.
This architecture, developed as the Extensible Traffic Management (xTM) subproject, will mature technologies and requirements for xTM system framework and services, and demonstrate complex interactions of xTM operations and conventional ATM operations in overlapping airspace.
The xTM subproject is executed by the Air Traffic Management Exploration Project in NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP). AOSP conceives, develops, and demonstrates technologies to safely improve aircraft systems that will operate in the National Airspace System (NAS). The program develops advanced technologies for a service‑oriented and federated NAS architecture to enable seamless integration of emergent vehicles (e.g., unmanned aircraft systems and advanced air mobility vehicles) with present-day aircraft. AOSP also works with other Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate programs to define safe NAS operational requirements for the next generation of vehicles, mature new transformative concepts, and demonstrate integrated systems.
The integration of xTM and conventional ATM will allow for more efficient use of airspace with harmonized seamless interaction between current and new entrants . xTM will transform the NAS to accelerate introduction of the next wave of vehicles and missions , and enable the FAA to reach their modernization goals to integrate xTM and conventional ATM operations .
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