Tag: January 2025

Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Advanced Propulsion Tech Will Help Industry Achieve Net Zero Goals by 2050

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – An expert panel composed of three top aviation original equipment manufacturers (OEM), NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy tackled how propulsion technology will drive the industry to achieve its goals for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 during the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.

Panelists emphasized fleet renewal, sustainable aviation fuels, and advanced propulsion technologies to help the industry achieve its carbon-mitigation goals.

“Aerospace is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize,” noted Peter de Bock, program director for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Organized similarly to DARPA, ARPA-E advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways to generate, store, and use energy.

“We take high-risk bets on the next generation of technology. What are things that the world would need 10 years from now?”

His agency is focusing closely on the transportation sector, which leads emissions over power generation, said de Bock, who predicts that the industry will get more scrutiny starting in 2030 and through the next decade.

“We see multiple modalities to be the path to the future. Anything you can do fully electric… can push the efficiency to 75 or 80%. That’s a big deal. It’s extremely hard but worth the try.”

ARPA-E supports innovative technologies across the spectrum, including high-temperature alloys, atmospheric sensors, and sustainable aviation fuel production.

Low-hanging fruit for several aviation engine builders centers on technology improvements that drive fuel efficiency given how much fuel costs airlines’ bottom lines.

More Efficient Propulsion

Michael Winter, chief science officer at RTX, and senior fellow of Advanced Technology at Pratt & Whitney, said 30–40% of the cost of running an airline and a modern airport is fuel.

“Propulsion efficiency really comes down to the fan or propulsor and the bypass in the nozzle,” he said.

Pratt & Whitney in 2016 introduced a geared-fan architecture that has enabled a 16% improvement in fuel efficiency, noted Winter. Its geared turbofan (GTF) engine technology uses a specially designed fan that rotates at a slower speed while still achieving high bypass ratios, leading to significant fuel savings and reduced noise emissions compared to previous engine designs.

“As we look to the future, we see opportunities for greater efficiency – number one, going to higher thermal efficiency in engines, which over the last 85 years has improved about 400%.” Winter added that higher thermal efficiency creates higher temperatures requiring new material systems and better cooling.

Saving Fuel with Propulsive Technology 

On the propulsion technology front, GE Aerospace is embracing open fan technology. While not a new technology, it has matured over the last decade and a half, allowing it to be “as fast as a jet, [quiet], and 20% more efficient than today’s engines,” according to a recent GE Aerospace blog post.

GE Aerospace recently was awarded 840,000 hours on the Frontier supercomputer through the agency’s INCITE program. INCITE is a highly competitive program that supports the world’s most computationally intensive projects. Frontier was introduced in depth at another session during the forum by Bronson Messer II, director of science for the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). (Read more on Frontier here.)

In November, the company announced a new project with Boeing, NASA, and ORNL to model the integration of an open fan engine design with an airplane.

UK-based Rolls-Royce is pursuing continuous improvement in its gas turbine and power systems, including materials, cooling, and cycle efficiencies. Steve Wellborn, the company’s senior fellow, said enhanced integration at the platform level will be critical for achieving these breakthroughs in fuel efficiency.

Embracing Whole-System Integration 

Wellborn added that he sees a lot of manufacturing, digital, and service technologies coming together. “You’re no longer just bolting engines onto an aircraft; you have to think of the whole system together.”

“At the forefront of this has to be safety,” he said.

Kathleen Mondino, manager of RISE Technology Maturation at GE Aerospace, also considers integration a critical trend. She predicts the future will be one that leverages open fan technology – “that means viewing the engine and aircraft together as one system, which hasn’t been done before.”

Filling Capability Gaps

NASA Glenn Research Center provides avionics providers with the tools and capabilities for optimization and simulation they need when looking at new architectures.

“We also look at where there might be a gap where there are lower technology readiness levels and do some work in that,” said Joseph Connolly, deputy for Electrified Aircraft Propulsion Integration at NASA Glenn Research Center.

NASA is supporting several papers at the forum looking at concepts for hybrid-electric configuration with distribution propulsion to see what benefits the technologies might offer industry partners in the future.

Connolly also shared details on NASA’s work on the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, involving GE Aerospace and magniX, to develop a megawatt-class powertrain for commercial aircraft by the 2030s. The project includes a parallel hybrid architecture for a Saab 340 and a regional turboprop demonstrator for a Dash 7.

NASA’s efforts focus on addressing key barriers in electrification, including high voltage at altitude and battery system performance.

Investing in Sustainable Fuels

Sustainable fuels are a big area of investment across the OEM community. “We see huge opportunities in hydrogen,” said Winter, citing the new HySIITE (Hydrogen, Steam Injected Intercooled Turbine Engine) concept, shown to be 35% more efficient while reducing oxides of nitrogen by 99.3% and recapturing one gallon of water every three seconds.

Capitalizing on Coming Fleet Renewals
Moving aircraft to more efficient propulsion will likely occur at the end of this decade, said Mondino.

“GE Aerospace is laser focused on the narrow-body market,” she said, adding that those aircraft fleets are up for renewal toward the end of this decade or at the beginning of the next.

She emphasized that making this transition will require “a big step change” in how the OEM market approaches product innovation and problem-solving.

“You’ve got to break out of the box that you’re currently in,” she said.

Celebrating Diverse Voices in Aerospace at AIAA SciTech Forum

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – On the final evening of the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum, female aerospace leaders, students, and allies gathered for an engaging discussion on the unique experience of women in aerospace and how to navigate interpersonal, gender, and cultural dynamics for long-term professional and personal success.

“Throughout my career I have witnessed the power of diverse perspectives and how they drive innovation, tackle complex challenges, and lead technology through development,” said panel moderator Soumya Patnaik, a principal aerospace engineer at the Air Force Research Lab. “This evening is all about celebrating that diversity.”

Patnaik added that aerospace isn’t just about technology; “it’s about people – our ideas, our collaboration, and our shared drive to keep moving forward.”

How does one attract people of different backgrounds and experience? Sonya Smith said it starts by being inclusive. Smith is professor and executive director of the Research Institute for Tactical Autonomy at Howard University. “Make sure that you’re going beyond your comfort zone, to reach out to different populations, to people with different experiences.”

In academia, that might mean reaching out to community colleges instead of only four-year universities.

“I look to raise the voices of women and bring them to more leadership positions,” added panelist Melike Nikbay, professor of Aerospace Engineering and chair of the Astronautical Engineering Department at Istanbul Technical University.

Her outreach to young people extends to her role representing Turkey with NATO’s Science and Technology Organization Applied Vehicle Technology Panel, where she has served for over 16 years and contributes scientific work to the research task groups.

Clearly, the issue of diversity isn’t just about gender – it can be about diversity of experience, be it cultural differences or age. While sharing their own experiences, the panelists offered practical advice to current professionals and the up-and-coming generation of engineers.

“Success is defined by you, nobody else,” said panelist Anna-Maria McGowan, national senior engineer for complex system design at NASA Langley Research Center. “We are so much more than our job.”

McGowan, a native of the Caribbean, said she turned down promotions because she knew the new roles would take her away from her family. McGowan’s son, an undergraduate engineering student attending Pennsylvania State University, watched his mom on stage as he attended his first AIAA SciTech Forum.

Afterward he said, “What she said reflected a lot of how she raised me – it was very familiar. My mom really encouraged me to get into a lot of different things. I’ve lived in ice caves for days in Colorado; I’ve studied abroad in Singapore. I run a product design team right now where about half (the members) are underrepresented.”

Smith advised engineering graduates who are looking to start families to be selective about where they choose to work. “Look for organizations that support family-friendly policies. Choose carefully where you start your career.”

“Be who you are,” urged Karen Roth, deputy director of AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, who also serves as the president of the Society of Women Engineers. Roth said those times when she wasn’t her authentic self to fit in never worked out.

Embracing Diversity Makes Business Sense

“Wall Street requires organizations to have diverse boards because they know that diversity has a profitability impact,” noted Roth.

As a mother, she brings skills to the work setting that allow her to be a better communicator, which is helpful when dealing with people interpersonally who may not have strong communication skills. In those instances, “understanding context” proves extremely helpful.

McGowan acknowledged that conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility have become a challenging topic for everybody.

“People are afraid if they mention it, they’ll (be viewed as) ‘pulling the race or gender card,’” the NASA career professional said.

She urged people to resist staying silent and for leaders to have honest discussions with their teams.

“Let’s make the conversation about diversity comfortable and engaging. It may mean we need to educate ourselves. We as leaders and future leaders need to have those conversations.”

After the panel, first-time AIAA SciTech Forum attendee Funmi Adeeye said her decision to attend the panel was easy. “I get inspired whenever I see women doing something great.”

The Nigerian native and Stanford University engineering student said she liked the advice from one of the panelists – to accept that you will make mistakes and to extend grace to yourself and to others.

“Be kind to yourself. In school, there’s always a chance to make things better,” she said.

Also in the audience was Joseph Connolly, an aerospace engineer with NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and former member of the AIAA Diversity Working Group.

“I’ve been coming to the Women at SciTech discussion every year since I’ve been attending the forum,” he said. “The panels are always phenomenal. There’s usually some inspirational and refreshing words of ways to work through tough situations, and how to make sure you’re giving yourself a nice balance between your family life and your work life.”

Airline Industry Revenue to Reach $1 Trillion in 2025 Per Avolon Report

Aerotime reports, “Dublin-based aircraft leasing company Avolon has published a new market outlook report, predicting that the global airline industry will reach US$1 trillion in revenue for the first time ever during 2025. According to this analysis, the main driver behind this growth is the Asia-Pacific region, which will be adding more capacity than all other regions of the world combined.”
Full Story (Aerotime)

Lockheed Martin Delivers 110 F-35s in 2024

Reuters reports, “Lockheed Martin delivered a total of 110 F-35 fighter jets to the United States and its allies in 2024, the Bethesda, Maryland-based defense contractor said in a statement on Wednesday. The delivery total achieves the higher end of the range of 75 to 110 jet deliveries CEO Jim Taiclet gave in an earnings call last summer.”
Full Story (Reuters)

Space Force’s Secretive X-37B Space Plane Surpasses 1 Year in Orbit

SPACE reports, “In case you forgot it was still up there. That U.S. Space Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-7) has silently slipped past one-year of flight time. The craft is engaged in performing aerobrake maneuvers, a technique to alter its orbit around Earth, as well as safely dispose of its attached service module.
Full Story (SPACE)

SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches 21 More Starlink Satellites from Kennedy Space Center

Spaceflight Now reports, “SpaceX kicked off Wednesday with the launch of a batch of 21 Starlink satellites, heading to low Earth orbit. Among those were 13 satellites equipped to provide text and data cellphone service. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened at 10:27 a.m. EST (1527 UTC).”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)

 

 

 

Video

SpaceX Falcon 9 launches 21 more Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center  (Launch at 01:00:56 mark)
(Spaceflight Now; YouTube)

ORNL: Troubleshooting Turbulence – the Next ‘Killer App’ for Exascale Supercomputing?

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – The aerospace community got a rare look at the capabilities and processing might of the world’s first exascale supercomputer during a plenary session at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.

Watch Full Session On Demand 

Taking the stage in Orlando, Bronson Messer II, director of science for the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in eastern Tennessee, admitted that while he is an astrophysicist, not an engineer, he shares common interests with the AIAA community: namely, solving tough problems in a world where the pace of technology advances continues to slow – even as the need for smarter, more advanced problem-solving is accelerating.

“I’ve heard throughout my career that Moore’s Law is dead. It’s finally actually true. This…doubling of performance…every 18 months has hit the end of the road,” he explained.

Messer said Moore’s Law’s demise requires scientists to think about how they’re going to reformulate problems and solve them in a much different way. And one of the biggest technical challenges facing the aerospace engineering community is turbulence.

“Turbulence may be the killer app for exascale computers,” Messer said.

Turbulence has a complex and unpredictable nature, making it difficult to accurately model and predict. That’s especially true for “clear-air turbulence,” which is invisible to radar. A 2023 study found that aircraft turbulence soared by up to 55% and some regions, including North America, the north Atlantic, and Europe, are set to experience several hundred percent more turbulence in the coming decade.

Enter Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer, which became operational in 2022 with 100 times the computing power found in typical universities, labs, or industrial environments. It can process billions upon billions of operations per second. Frontier’s processing speed is so powerful, it would take every person on Earth combined more than four years to do what the supercomputer can in one second.

“Frontier has more in common with the Hubble Space Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider (a particle accelerator) than with your laptop,” Messer emphasized.

Oak Ridge exascale supercomputer
Pictured above is the Frontier exascale supercomputer in Oak Ridge. Capable of performing two quintillion calculations per second, or two exaflops, Frontier features 74 Olympus rack HPE cabinets, each the size of a refrigerator and weighing 8,000 pounds. Each cabinet contains 128 AMD compute nodes. (Photo by ORNL)

Messer shared how GE Aerospace did one of the largest turbulence simulations ever attempted to study ways to negate the effect of turbulence on commercial flights. NASA is leveraging Frontier to understand the role of turbulence in flying and landing on Mars.

Concluding his talk, Messer invited proposals year-round from the audience to get time on the Frontier system, which is open to U.S. and most global researchers with some exceptions. He cautioned that only projects with the right level of computing complexity will benefit from exascale computing.

During the Q&A he said that his team has concluded an RFP for Discovery, the next exascale supercomputer that will replace Frontier.

When asked about exascale computing’s role in quantum computing, Messer said, “I’m a quantum advocate. My suspicion is over the next decade quantum computing will make the biggest impact on what I would call quantum problems – problems like computational chemistry, which may have an impact on things like aerospace.” He said there is a small team at ONRL looking at doing compressible hydrodynamics using quantum computing.

“I think the ability to do that on a very large scale is a way off,” he concluded.

“It was a very interesting talk,” said forum attendee Mike Ferguson, a flight test engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland. “I definitely think there are problems at our lab that could use that kind of computing infrastructure, but it would take some investigating and some actual deep thinking from all of us to figure that out.”

 On Demand Recording Available

Watch Full Session On Demand 

The Next Generation of Spacesuits Being Designed Digitally

Former Astronaut Leads Development of Virtual Digital Twins for High-Performance, Custom-Fit Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Spacesuits

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. –  During her astronaut career flying on five Space Shuttle missions, Professor Bonnie J. Dunbar recalls the challenges of ill-fitting EVA “modular, mix-and-match” spacesuits. Ironically, it was during training in Russia as a crewmember traveling to the Russian Space Station Mir, that she experienced the advantages of a customized, pressurized spacesuit.

Speaking on day three of the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando about spacesuit advances, Dunbar shared how she was so comfortable in the customized Sokol Pressure suit, that she napped for four hours while testing the suit/SOYUZ seat combination in a vacuum chamber at Star City, home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow.

Challenges with Fit and Customization

“Poorly fitting pressure suits that reduce mobility and have a high energy cost impact both mission success and safety. But customization had not been used since the Apollo program, where each crewmember had three custom suits: one for flight, one for back-up, and one for training,” she explained.

During the Shuttle program era, NASA went to a modular design for suits with five “chest sizes” and mix-and-match set of arms and legs, said Dunbar, recalling that the result was “suits that didn’t fit everyone as well as they should.”  Some astronauts experienced injuries during missions such as shoulder issues that required surgery when they returned home. These problems are currently captured as risks by both the NASA engineering and human research organizations.

She asked: “How can we use new modern digital engineering tools to revisit customization to maximize performance, and reduce injury, in a cost-effective and schedule-sensitive manner?”

Today, as director of the Aerospace Human Systems Laboratory in the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, Dunbar is bringing her unique experience to bear, spearheading research that could inform what future astronauts will wear on missions to Mars and teaching students about “Human Systems Integration.”

NASA Funds Digital Thread Research   

NASA was so interested in her digital concept that they gave her a Phase 1 NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) grant for the development of an EVA suit digital thread. Using tools such as 3D human scanners and finite element (FEA) technology to model the pressurized fabric layers of the suits, she hopes to create a digital system where custom spacesuits, optimized for joint mobility and energy expenditure before manufacture, will become a reality. This step in the digital thread is called “the virtual twin.”

“Spacesuits are not a fashion statement,” said the former NASA astronaut. Instead, think of it as “a human-shaped spacecraft.”

In addition to being pressurized, the 14-layer EVA suit generally includes a communication system, life support (oxygen for breathing and CO2 removal), thermal management, displays and controls, battery power, computers, advanced materials, radiation mitigation, micro-meteoroid protection, and sensors. When pressurized, fabrics become rigid (think of a balloon). If the joints are not properly designed or positioned with respect to the astronauts’ joints, an astronaut can lose as much as 50% of their effective strength, experience reduced mobility, and expend more energy in required EVA exploration tasks.

Dunbar’s research could also benefit current efforts by Axiom Space, which is designing the new EVA suit for the lunar Artemis mission. Axiom unveiled the AxEMU (Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit) prototype in spring 2023. Featuring new tech, safety features, and enhanced comfort and mobility, the AxEMU includes innovative life-support systems, pressure garments, and avionics. It’s designed to accommodate 1%-99% of the U.S. population.

Having a future tool to virtually evaluate the suit for that large range of anthropometric sizes before manufacturing could mitigate future performance challenges. SpaceX is currently designing customized suits, but could also benefit from virtual performance evaluations (virtual twin) prior to manufacture.

The Gold Standard for Spacesuit Design

Dunbar considers the dual goals of maximizing mobility and reducing energy expenditure “the gold rings” for spacesuit design.

“I wanted to take it [spacesuit design] from the Pillsbury Doughboy stage to ‘The Martian’ stage,” said Dunbar, referring to the advancements in suit design from the 1970s and 1980s to what was shown in the futuristic Mars adventure film starring Matt Damon.

Using human digital scanners such as 3dMD and VITUS in her lab that can deliver millimeter accuracy, she took the approach of aircraft designers: building a virtual twin.

“The goal is to integrate the virtual suit with the virtual person, and to model the torque and forces required to deform a pressurized joint using FEA tools,” explained Dunbar. “By iterating sleeve dimensions, joint designs, material properties, and delta pressures through sensitivity testing, we can identify critical factors for performance.”

Dunbar has advised one Ph.D. student and three M.S. students on this topic, all with published papers, both for modelling and breadboard testing. She plans to present an overview of the current research later this year.

Raising the TRL of the Virtual Twins for Suit Design  

“We’re continuing our work,” she said, estimating that her lab’s efforts to build virtual twins for suit design is currently at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3-4. To raise the TRL will require industry partners,” Dunbar said.

The Texas A&M researcher’s vision for tomorrow’s astronauts is powerful yet simple: “I step into the scanner. A few days later, I have a suit that comfortably fits and is mobile, and because it may be designed for Mars, it will be reliable, relatively simple, and easily repairable.”

While it’s still early days, Dunbar is hopeful that her lab is on the right path to create a future platform that delivers on that vision.

To learn more about Bonnie Dunbar’s innovative work and the process envisioned to support future spacesuits, check out a 2023 NASA/NIAC book, Made-to-Order Spacesuits featuring NASA Inventor Bonnie Dunbar.