www.nasa.gov/

Volume 62 Number 6 July 2020

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Future wing, cruise motors advance

Engineers at Empirical Systems Aerospace, or ESAero, perform fit checks on the future wing to be used on the final configurations of NASA’s allelectric X-57 Maxwell, at their facility in San Luis Obispo, California. Using a “fit check” fuselage, seen here, the team is able to determine the safest 

and most efficient method of integrating the wing to be used in Mods III and IV of X-57, while the primary fuselage prepares for ground, taxi and 

flight tests at NASA Armstrong. See related article on page 2.

 Photo courtesy of Empirical Systems Aerospace

X-57 progresses
X-57 page 8

Ground tests next

 X-Press July 2020

Astronaut, page 6

As part of the verification and validation process, the all-electric cruise motors to be used on NASA’s X-57 Maxwell 

began several rounds of tests, high power, and endurance testing at Empirical Systems Aerospace, or ESAero, of 

San Luis Obispo, California. The lessons learned from cruise motor tests will help in the effort to set airworthiness 

standards for electric aircraft.

This artist’s concept image shows NASA’s first all-electric X-plane, the X-57 

Maxwell, in its final configuration, flying in cruise mode over Armstrong.

Photo courtesy of Empirical Systems Aerospace

Progress on cruise motors 

and future wing sets the

stage for the next phase

NASA Langley/Advanced Concepts Lab, AMA Inc.

By Matt Kamlet

NASA Armstrong Public Affairs

Significant progress is being 

made in preparation for NASA’s 

first all-electric X-plane, the 

X-57 Maxwell.

As NASA completes tasks for 

X-57’s functional ground testing 

at Armstrong working toward 

taxi testing and first flight, 

assembly and qualification tests 

are underway on two critical 

components of the X-57 vehicle 

at NASA’s prime contractor for 

the project, Empirical Systems 

Aerospace, or ESAero, of San 

Luis Obispo, California.

These components include 

the electric cruise motors, which 

will power X-57 in flight, and 

the future high-aspect ratio wing 

that will fly on the aircraft in 

X-57’s final configuration.

The X-57, which was modified 

from a Tecnam P2006T airplane, 

is currently in its first of three 

configurations as an all-electric 

aircraft called Modification II, or 

Mod II. While this configuration 

features the replacement of the 

vehicle’s standard combustion, 

100-horsepower Rotax 912S 

engines with 60-kilowatt electric 

cruise motors, X-57’s test flights 

in this phase will be flown using 

the vehicle’s standard wing.

The following phase, Mod 

III, will see this wing replaced 

with the high-aspect ratio wing, 

greatly reducing overall vehicle 

area and relocating the cruise 

motors out to the wingtips. 

The aircraft will fly in its final 

Mod IV configuration with the 

addition of 12 smaller high-lift 

motors along the wing’s leading 

edge to be used during takeoff 

and landing.

The constant throughout these 

configurations are the electric 

cruise motors, which have begun 

tests at ESAero to verify that they 

are ready before they are installed 

in the X-57 vehicle itself.

“We’ve taken those cruise 

motors and we’re putting them 

through functionality tests, 

acceptance tests, and qualification 

tests to ensure their airworthiness 

for the X-57 vehicle,” said Trevor 

Foster, ESAero Vice President of 

Operations. “As part of the NASA 

airworthiness process, these are the 

verification and validation steps to 

reduce risks and increase the safety 

and reliability of the components 

on the vehicle.”
at NASA

News

 X-Press July 2020

Mars rover 

launch set 

for July 20

Armstrong provides Mars Rover Support

AFRC2020-0063-06 NASA/Lauren Hughes

Pilots Troy Asher and Stu Broce walk out of a NASA Armstrong hangar in Palmdale toward the flight line. In addition to aeronautics research, Flight Operations personnel support such missions as the Mars Perseverance Rover, 

slated to launch in July 2020. Specialized science platform aircraft, such as the DC-8 flying laboratory, highaltitude research aircraft ER-2s, C-20A, Gulfstream III and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, 

are based at the facility.

AFRC2020-0063-15 NASA/Lauren Hughes

Preparing for future missions

By Jessica Arreola

NASA Armstrong Public Affairs

A great example of commitment to the agency mission is 

the critical work of personnel in 

the NASA Armstrong Flight Operations Office. The agency approved use of its C-20 and G-III 

aircraft at Armstrong for transport of mission-critical JPL staff 

from California to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Trips would begin at sunrise 

with Armstrong’s flight surgeon 

Dr. Dwight Peake performing 

health screenings and protective 

equipment fittings. By sundown 

in Southern California, the aircraft crew would return home 

with team members whose work 

at the Cape was complete.

“One of the best demonstrations of One NASA I’ve seen in 

a while is playing out right now 

with our Perseverance rover. Together we are persevering.” said Thomas 

Zurbuchen, associate administrator 

of the Science Mission Directorate.

In addition to NASA, personnel 

from across the U.S. aerospace 

industry and the Department of 

Energy have performed critical 

activities in preparing Perseverance for launch.

Armstrong flight surgeon Dr. Dwight Peake performs a health check.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover 

is targeted for a July 20 launch. 

The rover’s astrobiology mission 

will seek signs of past microscopic 

life on Mars, explore the geology 

of the Jezero Crater landing site, 

and demonstrate key technologies 

to help prepare for future robotic 

and human exploration. The rover 

also will collect the first samples of 

Martian rock and regolith (broken 

rock and dust) for return to Earth 

by a set of future missions.

The Mars 2020 mission 

has been slated to liftoff this 

summer ever since the agency 

announced the project in 

December 2012. Owing to 

the relative positions of Earth 

and Mars to each other, launch 

opportunities come up only 

every 26 months. If Perseverance 

didn’t head to Mars this summer, 

the project would have to wait 

until September 2022 to try 

again, seriously impacting the 

long-term objectives of NASA’s 

Mars Exploration Program and 

increasing overall mission risk.

Significant challenges 

come with the territory when 

planning a Mars mission. In 

the case of Perseverance – the 

heaviest payload yet to go to 

the Red Planet – those included 

implementing a  test project  to 

confirm the soundness of their 

parachute design. In addition, 

an extensive effort honed the 

performance of the rover’s 

Sample Caching System, the 

most complex and the cleanest 

mechanism ever sent into space, 

and challenges of working in a 

new work environment as a result 

of the coronavirus.
X-Press July 2020

Appreciating AMTs

Coleman details AMTs role in aircraft flight safety

AFRC2017-0093-045 NASA/Ken Ulbrich

By Jim Banke

Aeronautics Research Mission 

Directorate

To mark Aviation Maintenance 

Technician Day May 24, James 

“J.C.” Coleman III of NASA 

Armstrong worked with his son 

on changing the transmission of 

their 1990 Nissan 300ZX.

The plan couldn’t have been 

more perfect.

Since 2008, on May 24 

everyone in the United States is 

asked to take a moment and give 

thanks to the more than 250,000 

men and women who keep 

airplanes in the air by working 

on them on the ground.

The date was chosen because 

that’s the birthday of Charles 

Edward Taylor, the man credited 

with building the engine the 

Wright Brothers used to make their 

first historic flights in 1903.

So, if you’re looking for an 

aviation maintenance technician 

– AMT for short – to appreciate, 

Coleman is certainly a worthy 

candidate. He’ll be the one with 

tools in hand and dirty fingernails.

For about 25 years as an 

AMT Coleman has inspected, 

repaired, upgraded and otherwise 

maintained some of the nation’s 

most sophisticated aircraft for 

the United States Air Force and 

NASA.

Today he is a division chief at 

NASA Armstrong and oversees 

a team of some 300 people 

who are responsible for keeping 

33 research and support aircraft in 

flightworthy condition.

Coleman and his colleagues 

take their charge seriously, even 

to the point of demonstrating 

a haughty boast that they have 

come to honestly and that has 

been shared by many proud 

AMTs throughout the history of 

flight.

With a NASA F/A-18 in background, aviation maintenance crew chief Walt Kondracki guides a NASA F-15. These are two of 33 research and support 

aircraft maintained by a team of 300 people at NASA Armstrong.

James “J.C.” Coleman III
 X-Press July 2020

AFRC2018-0287-158 NASA/Josh Valcarcel

NASA Armstrong technician James Ford works on the nose wheel of a NASA 

F/A-18 research/support jet on the ramp at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.

“It may be the pilot who gets 

all the glory, but it’s the AMTs 

on the ground that should get all 

the credit,” Coleman said. “We’re 

responsible for that airplane, from 

nose to tail. If it flies well, or if it 

flies poorly, that’s a reflection on 

its ground crew.”

Put another way, it’s the AMTs 

who own the airplanes, while 

pilots just borrow them for a bit 

and hope to bring them back in 

the same condition or risk the 

– good-natured? – wrath of the 

ground crew.

It’s not arrogance. It reflects 

the respect and seriousness to 

which AMTs approach their work 

because it can literally mean the 

difference between life and death.

“That really is a mentality that 

is bred into the culture of AMTs. 

That aircraft on the ground is 

ours. If the pilot has a successful 

mission, it is in no small part due 

to the maintainer,” Coleman said.

A Familiar Story

If there is such a thing as a 

stereotypical AMT, it’s probably 

someone who tends to work on 

their own cars, has a tool for every 

job, and loves to create and build 

things, Coleman said.

So, it’s probably no surprise that 

Coleman’s personal tale echoes 

the origin story of many AMTs.

Originally from Raleigh, North 

Carolina, Coleman was bit by the 

bug at an early age. Not so much 

an aviation bug – although he had 

an interest in airplanes – but more 

of a mechanical one.

“Even as a kid I would take 

apart my toys to see how they 

worked and try to improve them 

as I put them back together,” 

Coleman said.

To save money, his father did 

all the maintenance on the family 

car and young Coleman helped, 

gaining practical training and 

confidence in knowing that he 

was indeed mechanically inclined. 

(He wouldn’t buy his first new car 

until 2017.)

Coleman’s interest in figuring 

out how things worked initially 

prompted him to pursue a degree 

in electrical engineering. He began 

his studies at North Carolina State 

University and continued at North 

Carolina A&T State University 

until money ran out.

His father insisted that if 

Coleman wanted to finish school, 

he had to pay his own way. The 

Air Force turned out to be the 

solution, even if it meant an 

unsure future as a certified AMT 

rather than holding an engineering 

degree.

“I had no idea what an aircraft 

maintainer was when I joined the 

Air Force, or even really how an 

aircraft flew other than you put a 

whole lot of power behind it and 

hopefully it takes off,” Coleman 

said.

During the next 24 years Coleman 

would ascend through the enlisted 

ranks to the top, retiring in 2019 as 

a Chief Master Sergeant stationed at 

Edwards Air Force Base. He and his 

wife of 21 years, Carmen, also raised 

a son, Jalen.

Along the way he would work 

on many different types of aircraft 

– trainers, fighter jets, spy planes – 

and earn two degrees: a Bachelor of 

Science in Aeronautics Technology 

and a Master of Science in Aerospace 

Operations Management, both 

from Embry Riddle Aeronautical 

University.

A is for Aeronautics

When Coleman retired 

from the Air Force in 2019, he 

didn’t travel far for his next job 

at NASA, as he only moved a 

couple of miles down the edge 

of massive Rogers Dry Lakebed 

from Edwards to Armstrong.

In starting his civilian career 

at the nation’s space agency, 

Coleman said some of his Air 

Force colleagues wondered what 

he would be doing “up there” 

and needed to be reminded that 

the  first A in NASA stands for 

Aeronautics.

“We do fly aircraft and we do 

it exceptionally well!” Coleman 

said he told his friends.

Armstrong’s aircraft fleet 

includes 33 airplanes, of which 

there are 12 different major 

types. These aircraft range from 

the big DC-8 airliner-turnedresearch-platform, to small 

electric-powered drones.

“The beauty of working at 

NASA is the variety of aircraft we 

fly,” Coleman said.

Armstrong’s fleet also includes 

F/A-18 and F-15 fighter jets long 

since retired from the military. 

The F-15 was the first type of 

airplane Coleman worked on in 

the Air Force and it remains his 

favorite.

But it’s also a kind of lovehate relationship as the F-15 

represents for Coleman and his 

team the kind of challenge they 

face in maintaining aging aircraft 

NASA has obtained from the 

military and industry.

“The older and more high 

performance they are, the more 

love and attention they need,” 

Coleman said. “They are beautiful 

when they fly but when they 

break it gets increasingly more 

challenging and expensive to find 

spare parts or to make our own.”

The hunt for spare parts might 

AMTs page 6
X-Press July 2020

The wing and cockpit sections of NASA’s 

X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) are coming together at 

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works® factory 

in Palmdale. Major structural components still to be added include the long, 

forward nose and rear section – known 

as the empennage – that includes the tail 

and single jet engine. Nearby, although 

not seen in this picture, Lockheed 

Martin technicians and engineers are 

completing other assembly tasks, with 

fabricating the composite wing skins 

with the help of a sophisticated robot 

already done. When it is complete, Lockheed Martin and NASA will put the 

X-59 through a series of ground and test 

flights to ensure not only its air worthiness, but also its ability to create a sonic 

boom that can barely be heard – if at all 

– by people on the ground while it flies 

supersonic at a cruise altitude overhead.

Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin

AMTs... from page 5

NASA Armstrong technician David Johnson works on rewiring the cockpit 

and nose area of NASA’s high-altitude ER-2 research aircraft.

AFRC2018-0134-19 NASA/Lauren Hughes

require Coleman’s team to look 

through old, grounded aircraft 

stored at Armstrong or Edwards; 

travel to other desert airfields 

where large numbers of retired 

aircraft are sent; or seek out help 

from NASA research centers 

having aircraft operations.

“We really have excellent 

relationships with the Air Force 

here at Edwards and elsewhere, 

as well as with the other NASA 

centers. If you’re in aircraft 

maintenance you’re part of a kind 

of club and we all try to help each 

other out,” Coleman said.

AMT Work Ahead

At the same time the Armstrong 

AMT team is working to keep 

their current aircraft flying, its 

members have their eyes on the 

future.

“We just took delivery of 

the  all-electric X-57  and we’re 

working with our program 

managers to prepare for 

the supersonic X-59 – those are 

just two examples – so we’re 

definitely keeping busy and 

continuing to train and learn new 

things,” Coleman said.

The future also is bright for 

anyone thinking about joining the 

AMT ranks.

“Being an aircraft maintainer is 

one of the most rewarding careers. 

It is a labor of love. It is a skill 

set that will be needed because 

air travel in one form or another 

– and NASA is working on  a lot 

of different ideas – is not going to 

disappear,” Coleman said.

His advice for anyone thinking 

about such a career: If you have 

a passion for working with your 

hands and with tools, and if you 

have a knack for problem solving 

and troubleshooting, then you 

probably have what it takes to 

succeed as an AMT.

And just because Coleman 

wound up working on highperformance fighter jets, among 

other advanced aircraft, being 

certified as an AMT means you 

can work on anything from the 

smallest single-engine general 

aviation airplane to the largest 

jumbo jet airliners.

“When it comes to the general 

theory of aircraft maintenance 

and aircraft engine operation, 

while the complexity level can 

increase, there’s not a lot variance 

between the different aircraft you 

might work on,” he said.

Being an AMT is a career that 

certainly has worked out well for 

the North Carolina native, one 

that can be celebrated on Aviation 

Maintenance Technician Day.

“I truly believe I’ve got the 

greatest job in the world.”

More X-59 pieces are coming together
 X-Press July 2020

SOFIA New Zealand

deployment canceled

NASA/SOFIA/Waynne Williams

SOFIA taxiing on the ramp at Christchurch International Airport in 2017. 

The leadership of SOFIA reached a decision that the observatory’s annual 

deployment to Christchurch, New Zealand, is not feasible this year, because 

of ongoing concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Kassandra Bell

USRA

The leadership of the 

Stratospheric Observatory 

for Infrared Astronomy, 

SOFIA, reached a decision 

that the observatory’s annual 

deployment to Christchurch, 

New Zealand, is not feasible this 

year, given ongoing concerns 

related to the COVID-19 

pandemic. A revised flight 

schedule is being coordinated to 

focus on high-priority celestial 

targets that can be studied 

from SOFIA’s base at NASA 

Armstrong.

SOFIA observations were 

temporarily suspended effective 

March 19, in response to the 

COVID-19 situation. In the 

meantime, the SOFIA team 

has been preparing for a future 

return to flight through the 

formulation of new flight plans 

and will make that information 

available when it is finalized.

“Though we can’t fly to 

New Zealand this year, we are 

excited about leveraging new 

opportunities to observe from our 

base in California,” said Naseem 

Rangwala, SOFIA’s project scientist. 

“As always, we are thankful to the 

New Zealand government, U.S. 

Antarctic Program, Christchurch 

Airport, German Aerospace Center 

and other partners for the extensive 

work and cooperation that went 

into evaluating options for a 

deployment this year. We value 

the scientific data we collect from 

Christchurch and look forward to 

returning in the future.”

SOFIA typically deploys to 

Christchurch, New Zealand, from 

approximately June to August 

each year to study celestial objects 

best viewed from the Southern 

Hemisphere and to take advantage 

of optimal observing conditions 

during the Southern Hemisphere’s 

winter months, including long 

nights. The observations that were 

scheduled to take place from New 

Zealand will be assessed for future 

deployments to the Southern 

Hemisphere. The SOFIA Science 

Center continues to be fully 

operational, supporting services 

such as data pipeline operations, 

helpdesk and user support.

SOFIA, the Stratospheric 

Observatory for Infrared 

Astronomy, is a Boeing 747SP 

jetliner modified to carry a 106-

inch diameter telescope. It is a 

joint project of NASA and the 

German Aerospace Center, DLR. 

NASA’s Ames Research Center in 

California manages the SOFIA 

program, science and mission 

operations in cooperation with 

the Universities Space Research 

Association headquartered in 

Columbia, Maryland, and the 

German SOFIA Institute (DSI) 

at the University of Stuttgart. 

The aircraft is maintained and 

operated from Armstrong.

Researchers could fly with future experiments

For the first time in the agency’s history, NASA 

has initiated a new effort to enable NASA personnel 

to fly on future commercial suborbital spaceflights. 

NASA’s  Flight Opportunities program  has 

successfully worked with emerging commercial 

suborbital transportation systems to fly research 

payloads to space for short periods of microgravity 

time. In addition, the Flight Opportunities 

program recently released a call that allows those 

non-NASA researchers to propose accompanying 

their payloads in suborbital space.

Now the Suborbital Crew (SubC) office within NASA’s Commercial 

Crew Program will lay the groundwork for flying NASA personnel on 

commercial suborbital space transportation systems.  The goal of the 

SubC office is to perform a system qualification, or safety assessment, 

to enable NASA astronauts, principal investigators and other NASA 

personnel to take advantage of these unique capabilities. Following the 

qualification, NASA plans to purchase 

seats on commercial suborbital space 

transportation systems for NASA use.

One of the initial activities for SubC 

is to work with the Federal Aviation 

Administration (FAA) and commercial 

suborbital space transportation providers 

to define the approach for system 

qualification for NASA personnel, as 

well as identify the specific performance 

capabilities NASA desires.

NASA created the Commercial Crew Program to transport NASA 

astronauts to and from the International Space Station in low-Earth 

orbit and awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to develop human 

space transportation systems that will launch American astronauts on 

American rockets from American soil. The first test flight with NASA 

astronauts, the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, launched May 30. 

NASA
National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration

NASA Armstrong Flight 

Research Center

P.O. Box 273

Edwards, California, 93523-0273

Official Business

Penalty for Private Use, $300

Editor: Jay Levine, 

Logical Innovations, ext. 3459

Managing Editor: Steve Lighthill, NASA

Chief, Strategic Communications:

 Kevin Rohrer, NASA

Address: P.O. Box 273, 

Building 4800, MS 1422

Edwards, California, 93523-0273

Phone: 661-276-3449

FAX: 661-276-3167

The X-Press is published the first Friday of 

each month for civil servants, contractors 

and retirees of the NASA Armstrong Flight 

Research Center.

X-Press July 2020

X-57... from page 2

These steps include endurance 

and high power testing of 

the cruise motors and cruise 

motor controllers, with a focus 

on monitoring overall system 

efficiency. To do this, engineers 

use a dynamometer to measure 

current and voltage, taking in 

data at a rate of two million 

times per second. From there, the 

performance of these components 

can be recorded, analyzed and 

augmented as necessary to achieve 

maximum efficiency. The goal of 

this high power testing is to ensure 

that the cruise motors and their 

controllers can perform, with 

overhead, any of the steps of a 

flight mission.

Endurance testing involves 

a wider spectrum of activities, 

according to ESAero Cruise Motor 

Acceptance and Qualification 

Lead, Colin Wilson.

“The endurance testing involves 

everything from doing small 

checks and low power checks, 

making sure that the motor spins 

and communicates and gives us 

the information we need, all the 

way up to running full mission 

profiles,” Wilson said. “We 

take the testing beyond mission 

profiles, where you’re really 

pushing the limits of temperature 

and power.”

“So far, the motors and 

controllers have performed 

exceedingly well, and we’re in the 

process of getting them to perform 

even better.”

While X-57 will always fly 

with a pair of cruise motors in 

each configuration, five motors 

in total have been built for the 

project. One was disassembled and 

used for evaluation of the unit’s 

construction as a safety measure, 

two will be used as flight motors 

on the X-57 aircraft, and the other 

two will be used for envelope 

expansion testing and will act as 

spares to the flight motors.

Lessons learned from this 

testing are helping to pave the 

way for future Federal Aviation 

Administration airworthiness 

standards for electric aircraft, says 

Foster.

“It’s critical for the success of 

the project that we achieve the 

efficiency goals that we’re looking 

at, but also as we’re going through 

these steps that we’re beginning 

to develop how anyone else in the 

industry is going to certify or make 

airworthy motors,” said Foster. 

“We’re taking those first steps.”

As this cruise motor testing 

directly feeds the effort for X-57 

Mod II, currently housed at NASA 

Armstrong, preparation for Mods 

III and IV are well underway 

with the team getting the vehicle’s 

future wing ready for integration. 

An additional P2006T fuselage, off 

the same assembly line as X-57’s 

fuselage, was acquired and is acting 

as a “tooling” fuselage to allow 

engineers to assess the best way 

to integrate the cutting-edge wing 

designed by Xperimental LLC 

to X-57 for Mods III and IV and 

troubleshoot any challenges with 

the attachment.

Among the lessons learned from 

this phase is a better understanding 

of what physical modifications 

must be made to the fuselage to 

allow the wing to be mounted as 

efficiently and safely as possible. 

The wing is also undergoing 

instrumentation development, 

with engineers working to finalize 

the positioning of hardware inside 

the wing to accommodate X-57’s 

complex distributed electric 

propulsion system.

“We’re working to figure out 

the right positioning for specific 

instruments, and how to mount 

them,” said Phil Osterkamp, 

ESAero vehicle instrumentation 

lead. “It’s a small wing and the 

challenge is to get all these items 

fitted onto and inside it and trying 

to understand how to make this as 

light and as small as possible. It’s a 

lot of layout and routing.”

This is being done as a risk 

reduction for X-57, which will 

be the first NASA X-plane in 

two decades to have a test pilot 

onboard, but also as a schedule 

reduction effort. With these 

activities taking place in parallel to 

Mod II, the transitions from Mod 

II to Mods III and IV will require 

less time.

“The work being done now for 

X-57 is extremely important,” 

said NASA’s X-57 Project 

Manager Tom Rigney. “The team 

is proving out the key electric 

components that will very soon 

set the stage for all the parts to 

come together and for on-aircraft 

ground testing to begin. This 

critical step must be completed 

successfully before the airplane 

can take its first flight. Although 

managing this and the wing 

development simultaneously 

is challenging, doing both in 

parallel is proving to be a huge 

time savings.”

As testing on these critical 

components continues to advance 

X-57 toward its historic first 

flight, an approaching milestone 

in NASA’s effort to help set 

certification standards for electric 

aircraft of the future, anticipation 

for that day grows across the 

team.

“In the beginning, we were 

trying to push the envelope for 

this technology and I think now 

sharing lessons learned along the 

way, we’re providing more benefits 

to the aerospace community at 

this stage than we thought we 

would,” said Foster. “It’s really 

exciting to see how far we’ve come 

and really seeing things start to 

come together here in these final 

phases as we approach first flight 

for Mod II. I’m incredibly excited 

to see this thing fly.”

“Words can’t express it.”