NASA Contracts Boost Aurora's Airliner Research
Aurora, to be acquired by Boeing, is developing aircraft concepts to dramatically improve fuel efficiency of commercial aircraft.
The D8 is an odd-looking airplane by today’s standards, with a two-tube “double-bubble” fuselage and smaller wings than today’s aircraft.
The D8 is an odd-looking airplane by today’s standards, with a two-tube “double-bubble” fuselage and smaller wings than today’s aircraft.

Advanced aerospace technologies specialist Aurora Flight Design is expanding its electric and fuel efficiency research under new contracts from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) covering the design for a single-aisle turbo-electric aircraft with aft boundary layer (STARC-ABL) aircraft concept, as well as continued work on the D8 commercial airliner. The contracts, announced in October, came within weeks of the news of Boeing’s plans to acquire U.S.-based Aurora (Stand 646).

The initial six-month STARC-ABL contract calls for design work on a subsonic commercial aircraft concept that reaps fuel efficiency gains from a combination of conventional under-wing gas-turbine engines and a ducted boundary-layer-ingesting tailcone propulsor that is driven by a turboelectric propulsion system.

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