Next Steps To Be Presented At AIAA Meeting Monday

NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project is moving forward with its research efforts to "green" the skies. ERA is developing aircraft concepts and technologies to help reduce the impact of aviation on the environment during the next 30 years.

Fay Collier, ERA project manager based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, will unveil the project's next steps, which include large-scale demonstrations, at the 51st American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Monday, Jan. 7, near Dallas.

The demonstrations, which are funded by NASA's Integrated System Research Program in the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, will focus on five areas -- aircraft drag reduction, weight reduction, fuel and noise reduction, emissions reductions, and fuel consumption and community noise reduction.

The project's primary aims include the development of aircraft technology capable of reducing fuel burn significantly. This technology should enable the design of new aircraft that burn 33 percent less fuel than today’s airplanes by 2015, 50 percent less by 2020 and at least 70 percent less by 2025. It also should enable the adoption of new air traffic management operations that save up to 6 percent of annual commercial aviation fuel consumption by 2035.

The program also has a goal of developing aircraft technology and air traffic management capable of cutting NOX emissions 20 percent by 2015 when compared with today’s best engines, 50 percent by 2020 and greater than 50 percent by 2025, and transfer the technology to industry, and the creation of aircraft technology and airspace system operations to shrink the nuisance noise footprint around each airport until it is about one-third of its current size by 2015, about one-sixth its size by 2020, and contained within the airport property boundaries by 2025.

(Future airliner concept image provided by NASA)

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.aiaa.org