NASA Aeronautics

Official National Aeronautics and Space Administration Website
  • NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility vision involves the skies above the U.S. filled with new types of aircraft, including air taxis. But making that vision a reality involves ensuring that people will actually want to ride these aircraft – which is why NASA has been working to evaluate comfort, to see what passengers will and won’t […]
  • From Sunday, June 22 to Wednesday, July 2, two research aircraft will make a series of low-altitude atmospheric research flights near Philadelphia, Baltimore, and some Virginia cities, including Richmond, as well as over the Los Angeles Basin, Salton Sea, and Central Valley in California. Pilots will operate the aircraft at altitudes lower than typical commercial […]
  • A NASA system designed to measure temperature and strain on high-speed vehicles is set to make its first flights at hypersonic speeds – greater than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound – when mounted to two research rockets launching this summer. Technicians in the Environmental Laboratory at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center […]
  • High over the Mojave Desert, two NASA F-15 research jets made a series of flights throughout May to validate tools designed to measure and record the shock waves that will be produced by the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic experimental aircraft. The F-15s, carrying the recording tools, flew faster than the speed of sound, matching the […]
  • THIS PAGE WAS UPDATED ON JUNE 6, 2025(Updated Advanced Air Vehicles Program Fellowship Opportunities.) This Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) solicitations page compiles the opportunities to collaborate with NASA’s aeronautical innovators and/or contribute to their research to enable new and improved air transportation systems. Most opportunities to participate in research are officially announced through the […]
  • New technology tested by an industry partner at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley could improve how commercial planes taxi to and from gates to runways, making operations safer and more efficient on the surfaces of airports. Airport taxiways are busy. Planes come and go while support vehicles provide maintenance, carry fuel, transport […]
  • A team from South Dakota State University, with their project titled “Soil Testing and Plant Leaf Extraction Drone” took first place at the 2025 NASA Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, which challenged student teams to research aviation solutions to support U.S. agriculture. The winning project proposed a drone-based soil and tissue sampling process that would […]
  • NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft successfully completed a critical series of tests in which the airplane was put through its paces for cruising high above the California desert – all without ever leaving the ground. The goal of ground-based simulation testing was to make sure the hardware and software that will allow the X-59 […]
  • NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft successfully completed a critical series of tests in which the airplane was put through its paces for cruising high above the California desert – all without ever leaving the ground. “The idea behind these tests is to command the airplane’s subsystems and flight computer to function as if it […]
  • NASA has selected two more university student teams to help address real-world aviation challenges, through projects aimed at using drones for hurricane relief and improved protection of air traffic systems from cyber threats.  The research awards were made through NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC), which provides student-led teams with opportunities to contribute their novel […]