NASA's role in civil aeronautics is to develop high risk, high payoff technologies to meet critical national aviation challenges. Currently, a high priority national challenge is to ensure U.S. leadership in aviation in the face of growing air traffic volume, new safety requirements, and increasingly stringent noise and emissions standards. High performance, low emissions engine systems will lead to significant improvements in local air quality and have a minimum contribution to ozone depletion, which will result in an overall reduction in aviation's contribution to global warming. This program enables the U.S. to be competitive in developing very low emissions propulsion systems. Additionally, the UEET program will address the impact of projected aviation growth on the climate by providing critical propulsion technologies for a dramatic increase in efficiency.
Fuel savings represent significant cost benefits to the traveling public.