NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign continues to prepare for National Campaign 1 or NC-1 by conducting flight test efforts with various industry partners.
The team most recently completed flights with Bell’s APT-70 remotely piloted aircraft Dec. 14, 2021, at the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone in Fort Worth, Texas, to test Bell’s Ground Based Surveillance System or GBSS. Helicopter flights with a Bell 429 were also conducted in September for this same effort. Both test efforts are an extension of NASA’s Systems Integration and Operationalization demonstrations.
Bell developed a deployable and low-cost GBSS made of 15 Echodyne radars. The goal was for NASA researchers to evaluate if this system would be feasible for future use in identifying uncontrolled air taxi traffic to help avoid collision risk.