NASA on Wednesday announced that the agency has awarded Boeing an award for its Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which aims to inform the potential next generation of environmentally friendly narrow-body aircraft. Under the Space Financing Agreement, Boeing will work with NASA to build, test and launch a full-scale demonstration aircraft and to test technologies aimed at reducing emissions. NASA will invest $425 million over seven years, and the company and its partners will contribute part of the remaining financing of the deal, which is estimated at approximately $725 million. As part of the deal, the agent will also provide technical expertise and equipment.

“From the beginning, NASA was with you as you flew. NASA dared to go further, faster, higher. At the same time, NASA made aviation more stable and reliable. It’s in our DNA,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Our goal is that NASA’s partnership with Boeing to build and test a full-scale demonstration aircraft helps create future commercial airplanes that are more fuel-efficient, benefiting the environment, the commercial aviation industry and passengers worldwide. If successful, by 2030. We can see these technologies on planes that the public will take to the skies in the future.”

Narrow-body aircraft is the most important business of many airlines, and due to their heavy use, they account for almost half of the world’s aviation emissions. NASA plans to complete testing of the project by the end of the 2020s so that the technologies and designs the project demonstrates can influence industry decisions regarding the next generation of narrow-body aircraft that could enter service in the 2030s. As part of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, Boeing and the industry team will work with NASA to develop and flight test a full-scale transonic lattice-wing demonstration aircraft.

The Transonic Truss-Braced Wing concept includes an aircraft with elongated wings stabilized by cross struts. As a result of this design, the aircraft is much more fuel efficient than a conventional aircraft due to its shape, which creates less friction and causes less fuel to be burned.

“NASA is working towards the aerospace community’s ambitious goal of developing revolutionary technologies to reduce aviation energy use and emissions in the years to come, to achieve the goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050,” said Bob Pierce, NASA’s deputy director of aviation. Office of the research mission.

The Trussed Transonic Wing is the kind of transformative concept and investment we need to meet these challenges, and more importantly, the technologies demonstrated in this project have a clear and valid way to inform the next generation of narrow-body aircraft, benefiting all who benefit from this technology. uses the air transport system.”

NASA’s goal is for the technology used in the demonstration aircraft, combined with other advances in propulsion, materials and system architecture, to provide up to 30% reductions in fuel consumption and emissions compared to the most efficient narrow-body aircraft. depending on the task. In a separate effort, NASA worked with Boeing and other industry partners on advanced sustainable aviation concepts, including the Truss Link Transonic Wing concept.