NASA X-59’s Latest Testing Milestone: Simulating Flight from the Ground

5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is seen during its “aluminum bird” systems testing at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The test verified how the aircraft’s hardware and software work together, responding to pilot inputs and handling injected system failures. Lockheed Martin / Garry Tice 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…

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Using Our Facilities

NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland provides ground test facilities to industry, government, and academia specializing in the following:  Acoustics  Engine Components Testing  Full-Scale Engine Testing  Flight Research  Icing Research  Materials and Structures  Microgravity  Space Power and Propulsion  Wind Tunnels  Electromagnetic Interference Laboratory  Our unique facilities offer superior customer service, flexible scheduling, and state-of-the-art testing capabilities.  Facility Request Process  Customer contacts the facility manager and/or submits a test request form. See below for the Facility Request Form.  The facility manager will contact the customer to discuss the request and obtain…

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A Glimpse of a Meatball

NASA/Bridget Caswell The NASA “meatball” logo, mounted on the Flight Research Building at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, peeks through tree leaves in this June 10, 2016, photo. Built in the 1940s, the Flight Research Building, also known as the NASA Glenn Hangar, is a facility large enough to hold numerous aircraft of various sizes. It has been home to many unique and innovative aircraft over the years. Take a virtual tour of the Hangar. Image credit: NASA/Bridget Caswell

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NASA Invites Local Middle Schoolers to Explore Agency STEM Careers

Students take a tour of the Glenn International Space Station Payload Operations Center at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where researchers operate International Space Station experiments, during 4-H Day on June 14, 2024. Credit: NASA/Jef Janis Ohio middle school students will step into the shoes of real-world NASA professionals for a day of career exploration and hands-on activities at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Nearly 200 students are slated to participate in TECH Day at NASA Glenn on May 1, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Media are…

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Air Force Pilot, SkillBridge Fellow Helps NASA Research Soar

Jeremy Johnson, a research pilot and aviation safety officer, poses in front of a PC-12 aircraft inside the hangar at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Johnson flies NASA planes to support important scientific research and testing. Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna Jeremy Johnson laces his black, steel-toed boots and zips up his dark blue flight suit. Having just finished a pre-flight mission briefing with his team, the only thing on his mind is heading to the aircraft hangar and getting a plane in the air. As…

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NASA Studies Wind Effects and Aircraft Tracking with Joby Aircraft

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) One of several NASA distributed sensing ground nodes is set up in the foreground while an experimental air taxi aircraft owned by Joby Aviation sits in the background near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on March 12, 2025. NASA is collecting information during this study to help advance future air taxi flights, especially those occurring in cities, to track aircraft moving through traffic corridors and around landing zones. NASA/Genaro Vavuris NASA engineers began using a network of…

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Studying Ice for the Future of Flight

NASA/Jordan Cochran Thomas Ozoroski, a researcher at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, takes icing accretion measurements in October 2024 as part of transonic truss-braced wing concept research. In the future, aircraft with long, thin wings supported by aerodynamic braces could help airlines save on fuel costs – but those same wings could be susceptible to ice buildup. In the historic Icing Research Tunnel at NASA Glenn, scientists and engineers are testing a concept for a transonic truss-braced wing. Their goal: to collect important data to inform the design of these…

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NASA Reveals Semifinalists of Power to Explore Challenge

Explore This Section RPS Home About About RPS About the Program About Plutonium-238 Safety and Reliability For Mission Planners Contact RPS Systems Overview Power Systems Thermal Systems Dynamic Radioisotope Power Missions Overview Timeline News Resources STEM Power to Explore Contest FAQ 4 min read NASA Reveals Semifinalists of Power to Explore Challenge A word cloud showing “superpowers” of the 45 semifinalists. NASA/David Lam NASA selected 45 student essays as semifinalists of its 2024-2025 Power to Explore Challenge, a national competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes. Contestants…

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NASA’s Advancements in Space Continue Generating Products on Earth  

The cover of Spinoff 2025, NASA’s annual publication that chronicles commercial products born from space technology, is a detailed view of the lunar surface captured by cameras on the Orion spacecraft on a close approach of the Moon during the Artemis I mission. Credit: NASA The latest edition of NASA’s Spinoff publication, which highlights the successful transfer of agency technology to the commercial sector, is now available online. For nearly 25 years, NASA has supported crew working in low Earth orbit to learn about the space environment and perform research…

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Combustor Facilities

9 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Sector Combustor Studies (CE-5B-1) Combustion studies are conducted in this two-test position facility specifically in support of the NOx-reduction research for the High Speed Research program and the Advanced Subsonic Technology program. CE-5B-1 is large enough to test sector arrangements of injector elements to include interactions of the elements and single larger elements. The facility receives filtered combustion air from the 450-psig system. The air is heated in a 1,100°F non-vitiated heater at flows up to 20 lb/s, which…

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