Enclosure 

NASA Advisory Council Recommendation 

Future Airspace Vision

2022-02-10 

Name of Committee: Aeronautics Committee

Chair of Committee: Dr. John-Paul Clarke

Date of Council Public Deliberation: August 10, 2022 

Short Title of Recommendation: Future Airspace Vision

Recommendation:

Although the primary role of certification and development of standards is within the Federal 

Aviation Administration (FAA) purview, the Council recommends, where relevant throughout its 

research portfolio, that NASA should conduct trade studies that support the certification process and 

back-up analyses of why certification criteria are recommended the way they are.

Major Reasons for the Recommendation:

The strong collaboration between NASA and the FAA is encouraging. The Council applauds the 

synergy between the agencies and encourages NASA to continue enhancing the collaboration. 

Consequences of No Action on the Recommendation:

The role of “certification of new aeronautical developments” and the certification of aeronautics 

standards are within the purview of the FAA. However, the collaboration between the FAA and 

NASA is critical in this process. Failure to address this recommendation risks a unique opportunity 

to improve the certification process, including the chance to reduce the certification time. In 

addition, the Department of Defense should also be included in this discussion. 

NASA Response:

NASA and the Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP) appreciate the insights offered by 

the NAC related to certification and continued collaboration between NASA and the FAA towards 

future airspace operations.

NASA has taken several steps to ensure that its portfolio contains substantive research, 

development, and testing activities that will support the FAA certification process and criteria. 

NASA has established the interagency NASA FAA Research Transition Teams (RTTs) to ensure 

that research and development needed for new technology implementation is identified, conducted, 

and effectively transitioned to the implementing agency. It provides a structured forum for 

researchers and implementers to constructively work together on a continual basis. RTTs ensure 

that planned research results can be fully utilized and will be sufficient to enable implementation. 

These research results are provided to the FAA in various forms (studies, data bases, etc.) 

depending on the nature of the research and data. Below are some of the successful examples:
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1. NASA’s AOSP Program Director, Akbar Sultan, and FAA’s Chief Scientist for Architecture

and NextGen Development, Steve Bradford, developed a joint plan titled, “Certification

Research Plan for Artificial Intelligence Applications” in July 2021. This plan was also

submitted to the United States Congress in March 2022 as part of the requirement from the

FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (SEC. 741).

2. NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management project developed requirements

for Unmanned Aircraft System Service Supplier (USS). These requirements were

developed based on research and field tests. FAA has implemented relevant requirements as

part of Low-Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability towards the qualification of

third-party USS providers.

3. NASA’s mission task elements towards National Campaigns will provide the necessary data

to help FAA with the certification of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

4. NASA is building a Model-Based Systems Engineering environment for the Advanced Air

Mobility (AAM) project where air, ground, and enabling systems (such as communication,

navigation, and surveillance) requirements are defined and documented, along with

performance criteria. Upon validation of these requirements, they will be documented as

part of a Book of Requirements.

5. NASA’s Air Traffic Management – Exploration project is conducting research related to

performance and functions for Provider of Services for Urban Air Mobility (PSUs). It is

expected that PSUs will need to be certified by the FAA based on their suitability to support

UAM operations. Through RTTs, FAA and NASA routinely exchange lessons learned

related to the PSU’s functions, developments, and its potential role in enabling AAM

operations.

6. AOSP and the NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) worked closely with FAA’s

NextGen Office and developed a method to analyze letters of agreement (LOAs) across

FAA facilities to extract flight constraints using machine learning. The FAA has submitted

a working paper to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly Meeting

in Montreal, September 27 - October 7, 2022. The paper highlights exploratory work

between NASA and FAA to use machine learning techniques to extract flight constraints

recorded in LOAs. The Secretary General has distributed it to all the panels for information.

Application of machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to air traffic

management is a focal area to achieving airspace operation modernization and enabling

more autonomous aircraft operations. This is of interest to ICAO and is also a congressional

requirement for FAA and NASA.

7. NASA’s System Wide Safety Project has developed draft recommendations for the use of

runtime assurance as a way to enable the use of untrusted components in aviation. These are

currently being reviewed by the FAA. Subsequently, they will be shared with SAE’s G-34

committee focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML).

8. NASA’s System Wide Safety Project uses its research to make similar recommendations to

committees such as the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, Drone Safety Team, SAE

International G-34, SAE S-18, and ASTM International. NASA and the FAA often

collaborate towards these standards committees, with NASA’s recommendations being used

by the larger body when standards and eventually regulatory guidance and regulations are

developed.
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9. The Commercial Supersonic Technology Project has collaborated with the FAA Office of

Environment and Energy (AEE) on vehicle concept and trade studies to help define

procedures and limits for national and, with the ICAO Committee on Aviation

Environmental Protection (ICAO-CAEP), international standards for supersonic aircraft

noise and emissions. NASA’s Quesst mission will create community response data needed

by FAA AEE and ICAO-CAEP to define limits for a future certification standard for en

route supersonic noise over land.

NASA and FAA continue to collaborate on various advanced methods such as AI/ML applications 

related to airspace operations. To date, AOSP and NARI have supported efforts on natural 

language processing, machine learning of standard operating procedures, and certification of 

machine learning approaches using cases such as runway configuration. As AOSP continues to 

make progress towards AAM and Sky for All research, the automation architecture, system 

requirements, validated models, certification requirements as needed, and performance criteria will 

be uncovered through research, development, and testing. 

Development and recommendation of certification standards and criteria are primarily the 

responsibility of the regulatory agencies such as FAA, and various joint government and industry 

standards bodies [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, RTCA, ASTM International, 

International Organization for Standardization, ICAO, etc.]. The criteria can also be informed 

through recommendations by additional agencies such as the National Transportation Safety Board 

or Commercial Aviation Safety Team. Through its research, NASA will deliver analysis and data 

to inform the development and recommendation of certification standards and criteria by the 

responsible organizations.