NASA Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee Meeting 

July 24-25, 2019 

Glenn Research Center, Cleveland 

Welcome 

Mr. John Borghese, Committee chairman, called the meeting to order and welcomed 

everyone. He asked everyone present in the room to introduce themselves with name 

and affiliation, noting the new committee members present – Lisa Ellman, Eric Fanning, 

and Michael Hirschberg. 

Ms. Irma Rodriguez, the Committee executive secretary, reviewed meeting logistics, 

procedures and policies. Dr. Jaiwon Shin, NASA associate administrator for the 

Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), added his welcome to what was his 

final meeting as NASA Aeronautics Associate Administrator prior to his retirement in 

August 2019. 

Mr. Borghese reviewed committee meeting plans for the rest of the calendar year and 

the topics that will be discussed. For the benefit of the new members, he then led a brief 

discussion on the differences between the committee making a recommendation to 

NASA or citing a finding. 

Ms. Marla Perez Davis, Deputy Director of the Glenn Research Center, briefed 

committee members on the research capabilities available at Glenn both to the 

agency’s aeronautics activities, and its space-related programs. 

Dr. Shin then provided an overview of ARMD’s research portfolio so that new committee 

members could have a better understanding of what is driving the directorate’s research 

thrusts, and how those activities are meant to directly support the U.S. aviation industry 

and maintain our aeronautical leadership in the world. Dr. Shin noted that our ability to 

clearly articulate our research strategy – as presented in the continually evolving 

Strategic Implementation Plan – has been well received by Congress. He also noted the 

importance of maintaining a healthy balance in research between wind tunnels, 

computer simulations, and actual flight tests. 

NASA Electrified Propulsion Research Summary 

Mr. Jay Dryer, ARMD Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs, presented the 

overall strategy on electrified propulsion research at NASA. At its highest levels, the 

work NASA is doing in the area of electric propulsion can lead to benefits such as 

improvements to highly optimized aircraft such as single-aisle transports, help open up 

a robust Urban Air Mobility market, and revitalize the economic case for small, shortrange aircraft services such as those in support of regional connectivity. 

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Whether it’s small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), small aircraft associated with 

Urban Air Mobility, regional jets, single-aisle airliners, or large passenger or cargo 

transports, when it comes to integrating electrified aviation propulsion (EAP) into future 

designs, seven primary challenge areas exist. These include safety standards, 

certification standards, design tools, architectures, testing and evaluation, subsystems 

and components, and energy storage. Of these, industry still needs help in solving most 

of them – although the small UAS market is farthest along. 

Mr. Dryer summarized NASA’s research strategy and highlights as it relates to 

advancing transport-class aircraft technical and integration readiness, noting that a key 

element will be improving small core turbomachinery to enable efficient, compact power 

generation and improved overall propulsion system performance. 

He also reviewed challenges associated with small vehicle EAP and discussed the 

importance of flight tests to solve them. Related to this, the committee was reminded 

that the X-57 is an opportunity to demonstrate the nation’s ability to design, test, and 

certify electric aircraft, and to transfer that knowledge to industry. 

Mr. Dryer highlighted several fundamental EAP challenges still at play, including finding 

new lightweight materials that can safely be used with electrified aircraft, as well as 

realizing better ways to leverage advances in energy storage found in other industries –

namely automotive – for use in aviation applications. A key opportunity to solve some of 

these fundamental challenges may be found within the academic community as 

facilitated via NASA’s University Leadership Initiative effort.

Mr. Dryer concluded his presentation with these summary statements: 

 More electric systems will impact aviation ranging from small all-electric vehicles 

to larger aircraft with hybrid or turbo-electric propulsion. 

 U.S. industry collaboration interest is high and international competition fierce 

with increasing R&D budgets in pursuit of more electrified vehicles. 

 NASA has developed a strategy that provides leadership and a vision for this 

more electric future and addresses key areas where industry needs assistance. 

Discussion 

A lengthy discussion took place both during Mr. Dryer’s presentation and after. The

most relevant portions of this discussion resulted in a formal recommendation, which is 

stated here and includes the substance of the discussion as part of the major reasons 

for the recommendation section. 

Throughout the discussion, a common theme revolved around the question of: what 

level of research should NASA be doing when it comes to battery cells (i.e., at the cell 

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chemistry level or more of a systems level in which NASA uses battery cells already 

developed and made available from industry). Along these lines, different opinions 

were expressed as to the applicability of the automotive industry’s experience with

batteries to the aviation community. 

Recommendation 

The Committee applauds NASA’s research in Electrified Aviation Propulsion. Research 

is being performed in many relevant areas: aero efficiencies, compliance and 

certification, tools for better design trades and new materials such as insulators. The 

Committee recommends that NASA consider developing and maintaining a database of 

battery and cell test results to share with industry. The idea is to have an energy power 

storage (e.g., cells, batteries, etc.) laboratory within the current NASA infrastructure 

dedicated to testing specific electric aircraft propulsion. This lab would test against 

standardized protocols and make the results available to industry to accelerate the 

adoption of electrified powertrains. This approach could be expanded to other system 

components, such as power electronics in the future. 

The Committee further recommends that NASA explore other promising aircraft electric 

propulsion technology alternatives, such as fuel cell variants currently in use in 

automobile and bus transport vehicles. There are potential applications to the Mars 

mission so it will benefit not only ARMD but also NASA as a whole. 

Major Reasons for the Recommendation 

Both large and small innovative companies in the emerging electric aircraft industry are 

struggling to solve the energy storage problem. While significant progress is being 

made in the electric motors and lift systems, battery capacity with safe and efficient 

integration into air vehicles remains the critical component for success. Significant 

research is being performed at the University level. However, the immense challenge of 

transitioning these battery technologies is accomplished at very few manufacturing 

companies due to the difficulty of achieving large-scale consistent manufacturing 

processes at scale. 

These manufacturing companies do not readily reveal their latest cell capability to small 

companies. Other electric propulsion alternatives suitable for aircraft applications (i.e. 

lightweight, high power/energy density) are in early stage development. NASA can fill 

this critical gap by providing a responsible, credible, and consistent testing methodology 

that industry can access. Other electric propulsion alternatives suitable for aircraft 

applications (i.e. lightweight, high power/energy density) are in early stage 

development. NASA could provide a test bed capability for these emerging technology 

capabilities, providing significant value to the emerging US electric aircraft marketplace. 

The country wants to lead in this technology area and the value to the US economy is 

tremendous. 

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Consequences of No Action on the Recommendation 

The lack of extensive testing on new battery cell and other emerging electric propulsion 

technologies, along with the lack of supporting data will impede the small electric aircraft 

industry from developing the most efficient vehicles for this emerging market. 

Autonomous Systems Research Strategy 

Dr. John Cavolowsky began the second day of the meeting with an overview of NASA 

Aeronautics autonomous systems research strategy, noting at the very outset that 

ARMD is in the midst of concluding an extensive planning effort to coordinate budgets 

and activity related to autonomy across all programs and projects. 

Dr. Cavolowsky described NASA Aeronautics’ role is to act as a catalyst to accelerate 

the advancement of autonomous aviation systems and ensure the U.S. remains 

competitive. The idea is to lead the creation of national-level, large-scale systems 

enabled by autonomy; resolve critical technical bottlenecks with targeted research and 

development; build paths to implementation; identify and validate approaches to 

certification and operational approval; speed processes to achieving compatible 

systems operating procedures and minimal viable products; lead and coordinate the 

aviation stakeholder community; define realizable long-term objectives and track 

community progress; and develop system-wide industry consensus standards to enable 

markets to flourish. 

Current activities to achieve these goals draw from NASA’s extensive experience

conducting research and development in automating aircraft and airspace operations, 

including technologies related to Unmanned Aircraft Systems such as detect and avoid, 

traffic management, and adaptive re-planning in response to real time changes in air 

traffic and weather. 

These goals are informed by a number of operational objectives that have been 

suggested by the aviation community and/or are reflected in government policy 

documents including from NASA and the FAA. The objectives as summarized during Dr. 

Cavolowsky’s presentation include:

 Enable aircraft without an on-board pilot to routinely operate in the National 

Airspace System. 

 Remove the need for the current regulatory paradigm that requires a pilot for 

every passenger aircraft. 

 Achieve an order of magnitude of more vehicles than operators. 

 Enable order of magnitude increases to airspace system capacity, unconstrained 

by human workload limitations. 

 Enable air transports to be piloted safely by a single operator. 

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 Enable new emerging market pilots to receive certification with order of 

magnitude reductions in training. 

 Enable aircraft to auto-land anywhere and under nearly any conditions. 

Dr. Cavolowsky wrapped up his presentation by leading a discussion of the markets that 

will need autonomy to thrive and what the status of various technologies related to 

autonomy are as they relate to those various market opportunities. He noted that NASA 

is expanding its research portfolio related to autonomy with a focus on working with its 

government, industry, and academic partners in the areas of vehicle autonomy, 

airspace operations, and certification approaches to enable autonomous missions. 

Discussion 

The discussion that took place during and after the formal presentation covered a wide 

range of topics and sharing of experiences. As they did following the electric propulsion 

topic presentation during the first day, committee members took time after the meeting 

to draft several findings that in stating those findings also summarized the major 

discussion points. 

Findings 

The Committee finds that NASA has developed a reasonable strategy for advancing this 

important area of contemporary aeronautics research and development. The strategic 

focus on national level, large scale applications such as future air traffic management, 

unmanned air systems, and emerging urban air mobility provides both motivation for 

NASA involvement and rationale for specific targeted programs. In addition, the plan to 

develop assurance methods for complex, machine learning-based systems recognizes 

the need to address future aviation autonomy capabilities beyond the reach of industry 

investment timelines. The importance of the human operator-intelligent machine 

relationship is also recognized as a major challenge relevant to the broadest class of 

aviation systems. Additional areas that require long term NASA attention include cybersecurity and -resiliency, especially in the case of networked multi-platform systems-of 

systems. A companion NASA technology roadmap focused on stimulating fundamental 

advances would also be helpful. To facilitate those advances most germane to the 

aviation enterprise, NASA should continue its collaboration with the universities to 

increase interest and motivation in autonomous systems, while involving the students 

since they are the next generation of NASA engineers. 

Other suggestions on where NASA can provide significant value in autonomy include: 

 Certification of Autonomous Systems – Current approaches to hardware and/or 

software system verification and validation are ill-suited to today’s complex and

highly automated systems, often resulting in prohibitively expensive (... in time or 

money) test and certification programs.. These methods are fundamentally 

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incompatible with emerging autonomous capabilities that incorporate machine 

learning as part of their design. The ability to establish trust in and the requisite 

level of safety for these systems is a critical challenge for all applications that 

expect to exploit high levels of autonomy as a key feature of their management 

and operations. Certification methods that are compatible with learning systems 

and which focus on assessing operational safety are essential to the continued 

evolution of all the applications mentioned above. NASA, along with its industry 

and university partners, can play a key role in leading the development of these 

methods and motivating their adoption by federal regulatory organizations, 

especially the FAA. 

 Datasets for testing of autonomy under all relevant flight conditions – The FAA 

currently has methods and test cases for the certification of aircraft subsystems. 

For example, there are 34 test cases that support Terrain Aware Warning 

System certification. There are no current datasets or test approaches to certify 

autonomous capabilities at the aircraft level. This class of data sets with 

supporting simulation capability can help catalyze the industry toward developing 

more robust autonomous systems. NASA has already amassed significant 

datasets that would be useful to this end. Publication of these datasets would be 

beneficial. 

 Continuation of the UTM construct – NASA’s Unmanned Air Traffic Management 

(UTM) initiative has captured the attention of the commercial unmanned air 

vehicle (UAV) industry and served as an initial catalyst to enable more 

widespread airspace operations, including high density air traffic, at lower 

altitudes. The UTM effort over the last 4 years on TCL-1 through TCL-4 has 

demonstrated NASA’s role in providing global leadership in air traffic 

management for this new operational arena. Given the anticipated expansion in 

low altitude operations from UAM and larger UAS platforms, more needs to be 

done to grow the capabilities of UTM for these emerging applications, as well as 

to enable the effective transition of UTM to the FAA. The role of increasingly 

autonomous capabilities in coping with the demanding timelines and added 

complexity of the airspace can be anticipated. The Committee therefore believes 

that this program should continue with an expanded operational scope. Ideas to 

consider include adopting an “X Plane” approach (e.g. UTM-X?) to excite the 

public and motivate the industry for this important technology. A follow on to 

UTM could involve the assignment of special case airspace such as TRACON to 

provide a more realistic environment for UTM maturation. 

Lastly, while the NASA strategy for autonomy has matured since the introduction of the 

“Assured Autonomy” Strategic Thrust over 4 years ago, detailed program level plans 

demonstrating an integrated, comprehensive approach to advance the autonomy 

agenda have been elusive. The Committee urges that ARMD formulate a long term, 

integrated Program Plan to address the challenges embodied in the Autonomy strategy, 

including the allocation of adequate financial investment and suitable personnel 

resources that demonstrate NASA’s commitment to this important area for 21st century 

aeronautics. 

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List of Attendees 

Committee Members 

Dr. John Borghese 

Mr. Scott Drennan 

Dr. Eric Allison 

Dr. Mike Francis 

Mr. Anil Nanduri (via Webex) 

Dr. Tom Shih 

Ms. Lisa Ellman 

Mr. Eric Fanning 

Mr. Michael Hirschberg 

Mr. Andrew Cebula 

NASA 

Dr. Jaiwon Shin 

Mr. Robert Pearce 

Mr. Jon Montgomery 

Mr. Jay Dryer 

Ms. Irma Rodriguez 

Dr. John Cavolowsky 

Mr. Akbar Sultan 

Ms. Barbara Esker 

Ms. Lee Olson 

Mr. Eric Cooper 

Mr. Neil O’Connor

Ms. Jennifer Kibbler 

Ms. Vanessa Aubuchon 

Mr. Chris Teubert 

Mr. Nelson Brown 

Dr. Marla Perez Davis 

Dr. Ruben Del Rosario 

Mr. Greg Follen 

Fed Writers 

Ms. Abigail Casas 

Via Webex 

NASA 

Mr. Nateri Madavan 

Dr. Ed Waggoner 

Mr. Shawn Engelland 

Mr. Dana Gould 

Mr. Jim Banke 

Mr. Richard Barhydt 

Mr. Daniel Williams 

Mr. Andrew Carnell 

Mr. Matt Murray 

Other 

B. Harvey 

J. Kleifgen 

Jerold Stratton 

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