NASA is trying to design a battery-powered airplane that could prove to be instrumental in pushing the electric-powered aviation to reality. If successful, companies can specifically design electric-powered smaller size aircrafts, which will help in reducing global aircraft emission levels.
‘New Aviation Horizons’, a $790-million initiative by NASA is said to be a decade-long program which intends to replace the current airplanes emitting harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. This project is part of this program, and NASA is striving to decipher a greener alternative through the same project.
Even though it is a little difficult to replace the bigger airplanes, NASA’s technology can still be used for smaller aircrafts and even commuter airplanes.
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Washington asked NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. to inform about the plans regarding the all-electric aircraft X-57 (Maxwell).
This announcement was recorded last Friday during a conference to support Agency’s efforts in improving the aviation situation all around the globe.
About the Prototype
Borrowing its name from the 19th century Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, the plane will be using SCEPTOR (scalable convergent electric propulsion technology operations research) project. It will be a modified Tecnam P20006T with 14 electric propulsion motors that could help reduce the amount of energy required to reach a plane’s cruising speed of 175 miles per hour.
X-57 is NASA’s first plan in a decade. With this, they are planning to develop technologies that can assist in designing or constructing planes that do not cause so much of pollution and the kind of aircrafts that are easy on the decibel levels as well.
Although the American space agency has been researching on X-planes for a while, it will still take some time for these prototypes to be ‘flying ready’. But if materialized, they will change the face of aviation industry for sure.
