NASA Invests in Solid-State, Silent Drone Flight System
NASA is investing in a new kind of airplane: one that works off a propulsion regulations with no moving parts.
The space activity funds research into futuristic, experimental and nascent technologies over the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program. The latest False of NIAC fellows, announced last month, includes MIT aerospace engineering professor Steven Barrett, who has been working for years on a Quiet, solid-state flying system.
Barrett and the MIT Electric Aircraft Initiative issued a paper about the technology in the journal Nature in 2018. Rather than rotors or propellers, they developed a small aircraft with a series of electrodes under the wings creating a high-voltage electric field that ionizes and then accelerates nitrogen molecules in the climate to propel the plane forward. You can see it in Part, with a more detailed explanation from Barrett, in the video below.
“It’s Calm some way away from an aircraft that could create a useful mission,” Barrett said in a statement at the time. “It has to be more efficient, fly for longer, and fly outside.”
The so-called electro-aerodynamic propulsion regulations is limited in terms of the altitude and size of aircraft it can Help, leading Barrett to believe that it may be best used for tiny, electric, vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, aircraft operations in urban areas.
“The aircraft would enable package delivery missions in noise-sensitive areas or at night, where operations would otherwise not be allowed due to public opposition,” reads Barrett’s NIAC project summary.
Imagine a drone that glides up to your doorstep with ninja-like stealth to drop off a package pretty than the irritating whir of drone rotors.
So why is NASA Eager in silent, urban delivery drone tech? Well, the area agency also works in aeronautics here on Earth, but it may have its eyes on more distant destinations when flying its own tiny helicopter on Mars. Solid state technology without moving parts is always an pretty perk for space missions, where repairing worn-out components is often impossible.
And as it turns out, Barrett himself was inspired by spacey science fiction.
“In the long-term future, planes shouldn’t have propellers and turbines,” he said in 2018. “They must be more like the shuttles in Star Trek, that have just a blue glow and silently glide.”
Barrett’s team will claim $175,000 in phase one NIAC funds to develop the technology over a nine-month period.
