WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA has opened its new wind tunnel, the Flight Dynamics Research Facility, providing a critical resource for the agency and its partners to test the safety and performance of future generations of aircraft, rockets, and space exploration vehicles.
Located at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the Flight Dynamics Research Facility will support advances in aircraft safety, X-plane development, drone research, and spacecraft technology. The facility will enable both free-flight and mounted testing of a wide range of scale-model vehicles designed to travel through an atmosphere, from airplanes to space capsules returning to Earth.
'The Flight Dynamics Research Facility is NASA's first major new wind tunnel in more than 40 years and gives us a powerful new platform to test the ideas and technologies that will shape the future of aviation and exploration,' said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. 'America has led in air and space because we were willing to take on hard problems, challenge assumptions, and build what didn't exist before. This facility gives the talented team at Langley, and our partners across government, industry, and universities, the tools to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible and ensure America remains the world leader in air and space.'
The Flight Dynamics Research Facility's top airspeed of 117 miles per hour is twice as fast as the old facilities, enabling free-flight tests of heavier scale models. This will allow simulations of full-scale vehicles flying at higher altitudes - a critical capability for operations such as studying the stability of aircraft or reentry capsules coming back from space.
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