FutureFlight
NASA Flight Testing Starts with Noise Evaluation of Joby's eVTOL
Wisk Aero and Reliable Robotics are also providing aircraft for flight testing as part of a NASA project designed to inform the reguluatory environment for advanced air mobility, while also improving public awareness and confidence.
Joby Aviation
Joby's eVTOL aircraft will carry four passengers and a pilot on flights of up to around 150 miles. (Photo: Joby)

Joby Aviation’s eVTOL aircraft has begun two weeks of flight testing as part of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) National Campaign, becoming the first of the new designs to be evaluated. The company’s engineering team and the agency’s staff are assessing the all-electric prototype's acoustic noise signature in takeoff, hover, and overhead flight.

NASA has deployed its mobile acoustics facility and has installed more than 40 pressure ground-plate microphones at Joby’s Electric Flight Base facility near Big Sur, California. This grid array of microphones will support multidimensional measurement of sound levels from the Joby aircraft.