Technology Law

NASA’s X-59 Quiet Supersonic Aircraft Begins Taxi Tests

July 17, 2025

NASA/Jacob Shaw NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft has officially begun taxi tests, marking the first time this one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft has moved under its own power. NASA test pilot Nils Larson and the X-59 team, made up of NASA and contractor Lockheed Martin personnel, completed the aircraft’s first low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air…

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NASA Software Catalog Puts Agency Solutions at Innovators’ Fingertips

July 16, 2025

NASA’s latest open Software Catalog, released Wednesday, offers more than 1,200 downloadable codes developed by agency engineers that could enable faster solutions to energize the space economy and stimulate American ingenuity. The catalog is part of NASA’s effort to place advanced technologies, including agency software, into the hands of businesses, researchers, and entrepreneurs to foster…

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NASA Selects Companies for Architect-Engineer Services Contract

July 15, 2025

NASA has selected seven companies to assist the agency with architectural and engineering services at multiple agency centers and facilities. The Western Regional Architect-Engineer Services is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contract has a total estimated value not to exceed $75 million. The contract was awarded on July 14 with a five-year period of performance with…

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NASA Advances Pressure Sensitive Paint Research Capability

July 3, 2025

Many of us grew up using paint-by-number sets to create beautiful color pictures. For years now, NASA engineers studying aircraft and rocket designs in wind tunnels have flipped that childhood pastime, using computers to generate images from “numbers-by-paint” – pressure sensitive paint (PSP), that is. Now, advances in the use of high-speed cameras, supercomputers, and…

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By Air and by Sea: Validating NASA’s PACE Ocean Color Instrument

June 26, 2025

In autumn 2024, California’s Monterey Bay experienced an outsized phytoplankton bloom that attracted fish, dolphins, whales, seabirds, and – for a few weeks in October – scientists. A team from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, with partners at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and the Naval Postgraduate School, spent two weeks…

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NASA Air Taxi Passenger Comfort Studies Move Forward

June 20, 2025

NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility vision involves the skies above the U.S. filled with new types of aircraft, including air taxis. But making that vision a reality involves ensuring that people will actually want to ride these aircraft – which is why NASA has been working to evaluate comfort, to see what passengers will and won’t…

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Tuning a NASA Instrument: Calibrating MASTER

June 11, 2025

NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley houses a unique laboratory: the Airborne Sensor Facility (ASF). The engineers at the ASF are responsible for building, maintaining, and operating numerous instruments that get deployed on research aircraft, but one of their most important roles is instrument calibration. Think of calibration like tuning a piano between performances:…

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NASA F-15s Validate Tools for Quesst Mission

June 10, 2025

High over the Mojave Desert, two NASA F-15 research jets made a series of flights throughout May to validate tools designed to measure and record the shock waves that will be produced by the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic experimental aircraft. The F-15s, carrying the recording tools, flew faster than the speed of sound, matching the…

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Dr. Natasha Schatzman Receives Vertical Flight Society (VFS) Award

June 6, 2025

Dr. Natasha Schatzman Receives Vertical Flight Society (VFS) Award In May 2025, Dr. Natasha Schatzman, aerospace engineer in the Aeromechanics Office at NASA Ames Research Center, received the inaugural Alex M. Stoll Award from the Vertical Flight Society (VFS).  This award honors a professional in the field of vertical flight who “demonstrates an exceptional commitment…

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NASA Provides Hardware for Space Station DNA Repair Experiment 

June 6, 2025

When it comes to helping NASA scientists better understand the effects of space travel on the human body, fruit flies are the heavyweights of experiments in weightlessness. Because humans and fruit flies share a lot of similar genetic code, they squeeze a lot of scientific value into a conveniently small, light package.  Through a new…

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