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By NASA
An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is being prepared for a drop test by researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26, 2025, at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.NASA/Mark Knopp As the aviation industry works to design air taxis and other new electric aircraft, there’s a growing need to understand how the materials behave. That’s why NASA is investigating potential air taxi materials and designs to best protect passengers in the event of a crash.
On June 26, 2025, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, researchers dropped a full-scale aircraft body modeled after an air taxi from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry.
The NASA researchers behind this test and a previous one in late 2022 investigated materials that best absorb impact forces, generating data that will enable manufacturers to design safer advanced air mobility aircraft.
Image Credit: NASA/Mark Knopp
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is shown after a drop test at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.NASA/Mark Knopp As the aviation industry works to develop new air taxis and other electric aircraft made from innovative, lightweight materials, there’s a growing need to understand how those materials behave under impact. That’s why NASA is investigating potential air taxi materials and designs that could best protect passengers in the event of a crash.
On June 26 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, researchers dropped a full-scale aircraft body modeled after an air taxi from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry.
The NASA researchers behind this test and a previous one in late 2022 investigated materials that best absorb impact forces, generating data that will enable manufacturers to design safer advanced air mobility aircraft.
“By showcasing elements of a crash alongside how added energy-absorbing technology could help make the aircraft more robust, these tests will help the development of safety regulations for advanced air mobility aircraft, leading to safer designs,” said Justin Littell, test lead, based at Langley.
An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, on June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.NASA/Mark Knopp During the June test, the aircraft was hoisted about 35 feet into the air and then released. It swung forward before crashing to the ground. The impact conditions were like the prior test in 2022, but with the addition of a 10-degree yaw, or twist, to the aircraft’s path. The yaw replicated a certification condition required by Federal Aviation Administration regulations for these kinds of aircraft.
After the drop, researchers began to evaluate how the structure and batteries withstood the impact. As expected, the material failures closely matched predictions from computer simulations, which were updated using data from the 2022 tests.
An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is being prepared for a drop test by researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.NASA/Mark Knopp An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is being prepared for a drop test by researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.
The aircraft included energy absorbing subfloors, similar to crumple zones in cars, which appeared to crush as intended to help protect the seats inside. The battery experiment involved adding mass to simulate underfloor battery components of air taxis to collect acceleration levels. Once analyzed, the team will share the data and insights with the public to enhance further research and development in this area.
Lessons learned from these tests will help the advanced air mobility industry evaluate the crashworthiness of aircraft designs before flying over communities.
The work is managed by the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology project under NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program in support of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission, which seeks to deliver data to guide the industry’s development of electric air taxis and drones.
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Last Updated Jul 28, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactTeresa Whitingteresa.whiting@nasa.govLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
Armstrong Flight Research Center Advanced Air Mobility Advanced Air Vehicles Program Aeronautics Ames Research Center Drones & You Glenn Research Center Langley Research Center Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Explore More
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By NASA
KEY POINTS
Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune each emit more energy than they receive from the Sun, meaning they have comparatively warm interiors. NASA’s Uranus flyby with Voyager 2 in 1986 found the planet colder than expected, which challenged ideas of how planets formed and evolved. However, with advanced computer modeling and a new look at old data, scientists think the planet may actually be warmer than previously expected. For millennia, astronomers thought Uranus was no more than a distant star. It wasn’t until the late 18th century that Uranus was universally accepted as a planet. To this day, the ringed, blue world subverts scientists’ expectations, but new NASA research helps puzzle out some of the world’s mystique.
This zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by the Near-Infrared Camera on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Feb. 6, 2023, reveals stunning views of Uranus’ rings. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Uranus is unlike any other planet in our solar system. It spins on its side, which means each pole directly faces the Sun for a continuous 42-year “summer.” Uranus also rotates in the opposite direction of all planets except Venus. Data from NASA’s Voyager 2 Uranus flyby in 1986 also suggested the planet is unusually cold inside, challenging scientists to reconsider fundamental theories of how planets formed and evolved throughout our solar system.
“Since Voyager 2’s flyby, everybody has said Uranus has no internal heat,” said Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But it’s been really hard to explain why that is, especially when compared with the other giant planets.”
These Uranus projections came from only one up-close measurement of the planet’s emitted heat made by Voyager 2: “Everything hinges on that one data point,” said Simon. “That is part of the problem.”
Now, using an advanced computer modeling technique and revisiting decades of data, Simon and a team of scientists have found that Uranus does in fact generate some heat, as they reported on May 16 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.
A planet’s internal heat can be calculated by comparing the amount of energy it receives from the Sun to the amount it of energy it releases into space in the form of reflected light and emitted heat. The solar system’s other giant planets — Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune — emit more heat than they receive, which means the extra heat is coming from inside, much of it left over from the high-energy processes that formed the planets 4.5 billion years ago. The amount of heat a planet exudes could be an indication of its age: the less heat released relative to the heat absorbed from the Sun, the older the planet is.
Uranus stood out from the other planets because it appeared to give off as much heat as it received, implying it had none of its own. This puzzled scientists. Some hypothesized that perhaps the planet is much older than all the others and has cooled off completely. Others proposed that a giant collision — the same one that may have knocked the planet on its side — blasted out all of Uranus’ heat. But none of these hypotheses satisfied scientists, motivating them to solve Uranus’ cold case.
“We thought, ‘Could it really be that there is no internal heat at Uranus?’” said Patrick Irwin, the paper’s lead author and professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford in England. “We did many calculations to see how much sunshine is reflected by Uranus and we realized that it is actually more reflective than people had estimated.”
The researchers set out to determine Uranus’ full energy budget: how much energy it receives from the Sun compared to how much it reflects as sunlight and how much it emits as heat. To do this, they needed to estimate the total amount of light reflected from the planet at all angles. “You need to see the light that’s scattered off to the sides, not just coming straight back at you,” Simon said.
To get the most accurate estimate of Uranus’ energy budget yet, Oxford researchers developed a computer model that brought together everything known about Uranus’ atmosphere from decades of observations from ground- and space-based telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. The model included information about the planet’s hazes, clouds, and seasonal changes, all of which affect how sunlight is reflected and how heat escapes.
These side-by-side images of Uranus, taken eight years apart by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show seasonal changes in the planet’s reflectivity. The left image shows the planet seven years after its northern spring equinox when the Sun was shining just above its equator. The second photo, taken six years before the planet’s summer solstice, portrays a bright and large northern polar cap. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI) The researchers found that Uranus releases about 15% more energy than it receives from the Sun, a figure that is similar to another recent estimate from a separate study funded in part by NASA that was published July 14 in Geophysical Research Letters. These studies suggest Uranus it has its own heat, though still far less than its neighbor Neptune, which emits more than twice the energy it receives.
“Now we have to understand what that remnant amount of heat at Uranus means, as well as get better measurements of it,” Simon said.
Unraveling Uranus’ past is useful not only for mapping the timeline of when solar system planets formed and migrated to their current orbits, but it also helps scientists better understand many of the planets discovered outside the solar system, called exoplanets, a majority of which are the same size as Uranus.
By Emma Friedman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2025 Editor Lonnie Shekhtman Contact Lonnie Shekhtman lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Planetary Science Planets The Solar System Uranus View the full article
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By NASA
A funky effect Einstein predicted, known as gravitational lensing — when a foreground galaxy magnifies more distant galaxies behind it — will soon become common when NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope begins science operations in 2027 and produces vast surveys of the cosmos.
This image shows a simulated observation from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with an overlay of its Wide Field Instrument’s field of view. More than 20 gravitational lenses, with examples shown at left and right, are expected to pop out in every one of Roman’s vast observations. A journal paper led by Bryce Wedig, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, estimates that of those Roman detects, about 500 from the telescope’s High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will be suitable for dark matter studies. By examining such a large population of gravitational lenses, the researchers hope to learn a lot more about the mysterious nature of dark matter.Credit: NASA, Bryce Wedig (Washington University), Tansu Daylan (Washington University), Joseph DePasquale (STScI) A particular subset of gravitational lenses, known as strong lenses, is the focus of a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal led by Bryce Wedig, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis. The research team has calculated that over 160,000 gravitational lenses, including hundreds suitable for this study, are expected to pop up in Roman’s vast images. Each Roman image will be 200 times larger than infrared snapshots from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and its upcoming “wealth” of lenses will vastly outpace the hundreds studied by Hubble to date.
Roman will conduct three core surveys, providing expansive views of the universe. This science team’s work is based on a previous version of Roman’s now fully defined High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey. The researchers are working on a follow-up paper that will align with the final survey’s specifications to fully support the research community.
“The current sample size of these objects from other telescopes is fairly small because we’re relying on two galaxies to be lined up nearly perfectly along our line of sight,” Wedig said. “Other telescopes are either limited to a smaller field of view or less precise observations, making gravitational lenses harder to detect.”
Gravitational lenses are made up of at least two cosmic objects. In some cases, a single foreground galaxy has enough mass to act like a lens, magnifying a galaxy that is almost perfectly behind it. Light from the background galaxy curves around the foreground galaxy along more than one path, appearing in observations as warped arcs and crescents. Of the 160,000 lensed galaxies Roman may identify, the team expects to narrow that down to about 500 that are suitable for studying the structure of dark matter at scales smaller than those galaxies.
“Roman will not only significantly increase our sample size — its sharp, high-resolution images will also allow us to discover gravitational lenses that appear smaller on the sky,” said Tansu Daylan, the principal investigator of the science team conducting this research program. Daylan is an assistant professor and a faculty fellow at the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “Ultimately, both the alignment and the brightness of the background galaxies need to meet a certain threshold so we can characterize the dark matter within the foreground galaxies.”
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This video shows how a background galaxy’s light is lensed or magnified by a massive foreground galaxy, seen at center, before reaching NASA’s Roman Space Telescope. Light from the background galaxy is distorted, curving around the foreground galaxy and appearing more than once as warped arcs and crescents. Researchers studying these objects, known as gravitational lenses, can better characterize the mass of the foreground galaxy, which offers clues about the particle nature of dark matter.Credit: NASA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) What Is Dark Matter?
Not all mass in galaxies is made up of objects we can see, like star clusters. A significant fraction of a galaxy’s mass is made up of dark matter, so called because it doesn’t emit, reflect, or absorb light. Dark matter does, however, possess mass, and like anything else with mass, it can cause gravitational lensing.
When the gravity of a foreground galaxy bends the path of a background galaxy’s light, its light is routed onto multiple paths. “This effect produces multiple images of the background galaxy that are magnified and distorted differently,” Daylan said. These “duplicates” are a huge advantage for researchers — they allow multiple measurements of the lensing galaxy’s mass distribution, ensuring that the resulting measurement is far more precise.
Roman’s 300-megapixel camera, known as its Wide Field Instrument, will allow researchers to accurately determine the bending of the background galaxies’ light by as little as 50 milliarcseconds, which is like measuring the diameter of a human hair from the distance of more than two and a half American football fields or soccer pitches.
The amount of gravitational lensing that the background light experiences depends on the intervening mass. Less massive clumps of dark matter cause smaller distortions. As a result, if researchers are able to measure tinier amounts of bending, they can detect and characterize smaller, less massive dark matter structures — the types of structures that gradually merged over time to build up the galaxies we see today.
With Roman, the team will accumulate overwhelming statistics about the size and structures of early galaxies. “Finding gravitational lenses and being able to detect clumps of dark matter in them is a game of tiny odds. With Roman, we can cast a wide net and expect to get lucky often,” Wedig said. “We won’t see dark matter in the images — it’s invisible — but we can measure its effects.”
“Ultimately, the question we’re trying to address is: What particle or particles constitute dark matter?” Daylan added. “While some properties of dark matter are known, we essentially have no idea what makes up dark matter. Roman will help us to distinguish how dark matter is distributed on small scales and, hence, its particle nature.”
Preparations Continue
Before Roman launches, the team will also search for more candidates in observations from ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Euclid mission and the upcoming ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which will begin its full-scale operations in a few weeks. Once Roman’s infrared images are in hand, the researchers will combine them with complementary visible light images from Euclid, Rubin, and Hubble to maximize what’s known about these galaxies.
“We will push the limits of what we can observe, and use every gravitational lens we detect with Roman to pin down the particle nature of dark matter,” Daylan said.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Claire Blome
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 12, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Astrophysics Dark Matter Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research The Universe Explore More
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By Space Force
The Air Force Aid Society, AFAS, announced a series of bold changes aimed at better supporting the evolving needs of Airmen, Guardians, and their families.
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