General Advanced Air Mobility

This request for information (RFI) is being used to gather market research for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to make inform decisions regarding potential partnership strategies and future research to enable Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). NASA is seeking information from public, private, and academic organizations to determine technical needs and community interests that may lead to future solicitations regarding AAM research and development (R&D).

Background

Advanced Air Mobility, i.e., safe, sustainable, affordable, and accessible aviation for transformational local and intraregional missions, is a growing area of interest and investment worldwide. AAM capabilities, once implemented, are envisioned to bring aviation into peoples’ daily lives through numerous use cases, including on-demand passenger-carrying flights across town, “middle mile” and “last mile” cargo logistics, disaster response, medevac, and inter-city passenger transport. These transformational capabilities are largely envisioned to result from the convergence of new technologies and business models, including increased levels of automation and aircraft electrification. A broad range of vehicle types, operating locations, and operational concepts are anticipated to fulfill a wide variety of AAM missions.

NASA’s AAM Mission is committed to delivering aircraft, airspace, and infrastructure system and architecture requirements to enable sustainable and scalable medium density advanced air mobility operations. Achieving these systems and architecture requirements will involve enabling activities, such as the AAM National Campaign Series, NASA project research partnerships, and a robust Ecosystem Partnership model. This particular RFI is just one avenue of multiple planned opportunities for formal feedback on or participation in NASA’s AAM Mission-related efforts to develop these requirements and help enable AAM. A list of other, current solicitations will be accessible via www.nasa.gov/aam.

The AAM Ecosystem Working Groups are an instrumental piece of the Ecosystem Partnership model and are providing valuable input across vehicle, airspace, and community partners throughout the globe. NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) created the AAM Ecosystem Working Groups (AEWGs) to provide a forum for multiple stakeholders, each possessing the necessary authority, expertise, and/or resources to fulfill a critical role in AAM’s development, approval, and implementation, to come together and impact the overall ecosystem. The primary purpose of these working groups is to share input, information, and opinions that have the potential to accelerate the development of safe, high-volume AAM flight operations in the existing and anticipated future national airspace system. They are a forum with broad participation from many organizations in which participants can communicate industry developments, discuss research and development (R&D) priorities, and share concepts that may enable AAM. This broad participation allows for understanding the viewpoints of a diverse group of stakeholders and provides NASA with an understanding of the ecosystem as a whole. NASA expects input received from the workshops to be broad and diverse and therefore, does not expect inputs to achieve consensus. AEWG participants help identify the critical parameters and standards that may impact the future framework development and approach for safety, certification, airspace management, aircraft concepts, technologies, and architectures. Overall, the AAM Ecosystem Working Groups, in coordination with industry developments, the AAM National Campaign Series, and other ARMD efforts, contribute to the enablement of AAM markets.

Through the AEWGs, NASA seeks to accomplish the following goals:

• Communicate the current and anticipated future state of the AAM ecosystem and align to the extent possible on terminology, challenges, barriers, and solutions.
• Provide a forum to forge collaborative opportunities that will advance the state of the art in AAM, including establishing new industry partnerships.
• Increase awareness of NASA’s research and planned transition paths.
• Support discussions of required and ongoing regulatory and standards development activities at the federal, state, and local level.
• Help document the current state of the industry, thereby enabling the identification of research gaps and the areas of highest industry need.

As mentioned above, with input from the AEWGs, ARMD projects, and other stakeholders, NASA seeks to develop system and architecture requirements to enable sustainable and scalable medium density advanced air mobility operations. These requirements will be publicly disseminated and act as a framework and guideline for the development of AAM technologies, systems, and operations. Because the AEWGs are open forums, certain proprietary information may not ultimately be shared by participants in these discussions. Such proprietary information may be important to understand the overall state and best future directions for the broad AAM ecosystem, including potential system and architecture requirements.

For purposes of this RFI, “Proprietary Data” shall mean information provided in the response embodying trade secrets developed at private expense or commercial or financial information that is privileged or confidential, and that includes a clear restrictive notice, unless the information is (i) known or available from other sources without restriction, (ii) known, possessed, or developed independently, and without reference to such marked information in the proposal, (iii) made available by the owners to others without restriction, or (iv) required by law or court order to be disclosed. Responses submitted in response to this RFI will not be returned and respondents must clearly mark any Proprietary Data they provide. With respect to such any responses submitted, including Proprietary Data, NASA shall be allowed to use said data for U.S. Government purposes.

NASA seeks information and viewpoints on the following priority topics:

• The overall approach to and timing of the National Campaign (NC) Series (as documented in the link below).
• Requirements and recommended practices associated with aircraft systems and subsystems, airspace systems and subsystems, and infrastructure necessary to advance AAM.
• Ecosystem wide R&D efforts that will enable critical elements of AAM integration, with a focus on areas covering the existing NASA R&D portfolio (as documented in the link below).
• Federal, local, and other industry-led AAM initiatives that may impact NASA’s planning or execution of its AAM-related efforts.

Note, we foresee these topics evolving along with the AAM ecosystem. For the most up to date list, visit the AAM Portal: https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/aam-portal/rfipriorities/

Responding to this RFI:

NASA is seeking responses from potential collaborators looking to enable AAM.

RFI responses must include:

• Name of the primary point of contact for the response
• Academic faculty or business title
• Institution or organization affiliation
• Email address
• Phone number
• Identification of other key individuals who collaborated on the RFI response
• Executive summary (1 page maximum)
  • Acceptable files must be able to be opened in commonly readable formats, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Office
• Relevant documents
  • Acceptable files must be able to be opened in commonly readable formats, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Office

Responses should be emailed to: arc-cal-nari@mail.nasa.gov

This is a request for information only and does not constitute a commitment, implied or otherwise, that NASA will take procurement action in this matter. Further, neither NASA nor the Government will be responsible for any cost incurred for the preparation or submission of this information in response to this RFI.

Responses must not include bilateral participation, collaboration, or coordination with China or any Chinese-owned company or entity by NASA unless such activities are other specifically authorized by law. By submitting a response, respondents are certifying that the response does not include bilateral participation, collaboration, or coordination with China or any Chinese-owned company or entity by NASA. “China or Chinese-owned Company” means the People’s Republic of China, any company owned by the People’s Republic of China, or any company incorporated under the laws of the People’s Republic of China. By submission of its proposal, the respondent represents that the respondent is not China or a Chinese-owned company, and that the response does not anticipate or require NASA to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally with China or any Chinese-owned company.