Wisk Aero and NASA sign five-year partnership to advance sustainable autonomous flights

All-electric, autonomous aircraft developer Wisk Aero announced a fresh five-year research partnership with NASA to establish advanced air mobility standards to eventually introduce autonomous aircraft into the National Airspace System (NAS).

Wisk Aero is a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing based in California. The company’s flagship model, the Cora, is an all-electric aircraft that predates the Wisk Aero brand and has seen several generational variants over the seven years or so.

In 2020, Wisk Aero joined NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility Project, part of the space administration’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, to address key AAM industry challenges and lay the framework for future autonomous passenger flights.

Since then, Wisk and NASA have continued collaborating to develop key guidance for the safe integration of autonomous aircraft systems for urban air mobility (UAM) operations under that initial Space Act Agreement.

This week, Wisk Aero and NASA committed another five years to their research partnership. They hope to bring regulated and autonomous aerial flight to the public by the end of the decade.

Wisk and NASA extend partnership another five years

Wisk Aero shared details of its refreshed partnership with NASA this week. The autonomous aviation specialist has signed a new five-year Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement (NRSAA) with the renowned space administration.

Per Wisk, this new agreement focuses on critical research led by NASA’s Air Traffic Management Exploration (ATM-X) project, which is centered around the advancement of commercialized autonomous aircraft travel under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) in the National Airspace System (NAS). 

As a specialist in autonomous, zero-emission aircraft, Wisk intends to continue its research alongside NASA to help regulators determine future eVTOL flight procedures and capabilities in the US. Regulatory developments on the to-do list for the latest NRSAA include optimizing airspace and route designs for highly automated UAM operations, establishing critical aircraft and ground-based safety system requirements for autonomous flight in urban environments, and establishing Air Traffic Control (ATC) communication protocols and procedures for seamless integration of future UAM aircraft.

To achieve these goals, Wisk said its research with NASA will more specifically focus on utilizing advanced simulation and Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) flight environments, which combine live flights with a simulated airspace to enable researchers to assess future operations. Erick Corona, Director of Airspace Operational Integration at Wisk, elaborated:

This new, long-term agreement with NASA is a significant step forward for Wisk and the broader UAM industry. With NASA’s simulation and LVC capabilities, we can accelerate the development of our Gen 6 autonomous systems to safely and efficiently integrate into the US NAS before the end of the decade.

The teams from Wisk and NASA already met last month, continuing their research while beginning to determine how instrument flight procedures and advanced technologies can work together to enable safe autonomous passenger flights by 2030.