X-Plane
NASA recently disclosed an all-electric airplane its been working on for several years already. The project is now reaching closure as the plane is set to fly in late 2020.
X-plane (X-57, or Maxwell for short) is an experimental aircraft by NASA that has been in development since 2015. The aim is to have it ready for its first test flight from Edwards Air Force Base in the desert of southern California by next year. It will have a maximum operational altitude of 14,000ft or 4.2km.
The body of the X-57 is an Italian-made Tecnam P2006T twin-engine propeller plane. They took out the traditional combustion engines and replaced them with 14 electric cruise motors. Specially designed lithium-ion batteries power the motors. It’s essentially the same technology used in electric cars and mobile phones.
NASA decided to use an existing aircraft design so it could compare data from the original to the data produced by the model using electric propulsion instead.
Practice Makes Perfect
NASA built a flight simulator specifically for the X-57. Pilots and engineers have been using it to get a sense of how it will be flying the real thing.
Other Experimental Aircrafts
The X-57 isn’t the first experimental aircraft by the US space agency. NASA also developed the X-15 rocket plane flown by Neil Armstrong before he joined the Apollo team, and the bullet-shaped Bell X-1 that first broke the sound barrier.
The X-57 will be NASA’s first crewed X-plane developed in two decades.
Aspirations
The X-57 differs from other electric aircraft because NASA made it intending to receive government certification eventually. The design is following the standards of commercial manufacturers. For example, standards for airworthiness and safety, as well as for energy efficiency and noise.
Brent Cobleigh, a project manager for NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards, said:
We’re focusing on things that can help the whole industry, not just one company. Our target right now is to fly this airplane in late 2020.
Until current battery technology improves, the X-57 will only be used in short-haul flights. For example, it can be used as a commuter plane or an air-taxi.
