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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 4)
The X-57 Maxwell was the agency's first manned, all-electric experimental aircraft and was part of NASA’s commitment to support the U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan's goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from the US aviation sector by 2050. The sub-project's goal was to aid the nation’s electric aircraft community and share the electric-propulsion-focused design and airworthiness process with regulators.
Aircraft operational activities concluded without flight in September 2023, with documentation and close-out activities continuing through March 2024. The project encountered several challenges to safe flight, including mechanical issues with experimental hardware late into its lifecycle and a lack of availability of critical components required to develop the experimental hardware; the timeline necessary to solve these challenges would not allow the team to achieve flight before the established end-date of the project.
The X-plane baseline is a modified Italian Tecnam P2006T; the advantage of using an existing general aviation aircraft design is that data from the baseline model, powered by traditional combustion engines, can be compared to data produced by the same model powered by electric propulsion. The X-57 was designed to undergo up to three additional configurations as an electric aircraft, with the final configuration to feature 14 electric motors and propellers (12 high-lift motors distributed along the leading edge of the wing and two large wingtip cruise motors). An overview of the X-57 including the 4 aircraft "mods" or configurations and specifications can be found here.
The X-57 sub-project falls under the Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project and is part of NASA's Integrated Aviation Systems Program.
Since 2016, the X-57 sub-project shared best practices and lessons learned about battery technology, electromagnetic interference, motor controller design, and more. This information will continue to impact the development of advanced certification approaches for electric propulsion in emerging electric aircraft markets. NASA will continue its research into electrified aircraft through other projects, including its Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstrations project.
The value of the pathfinding work done on the X-57 sub-project is well established and recognized by industry and additional research findings will be published and shared with the technical community as well as Standards and Regulation Committees. A list of the contributions X- 57 has made to-date can be found on the technical papers site.
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