NASA opened its first major new wind tunnel in more than 40 years Friday, marking a milestone for future aviation and space-exploration research.
The Flight Dynamics Research Facility, located at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will serve as a testing ground for future aircraft and space missions.
“The opening of the Flight Dynamics Research Facility represents a significant advancement for NASA and for the nation,” said Dr. Trina Dyal, NASA Langley center director. “By bringing modernized testing capabilities under one roof, we are enabling transformative research that will ensure the United States remains at the forefront of aeronautics and exploration.”
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Built through a partnership with the US General Services Administration, the more advanced and efficient tunnel replaces two facilities that had operated for more than 80 years.
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The project is part of NASA’s broader effort to modernize its infrastructure and reduce the cost of maintaining aging facilities.
“If we continue to invest our resources, maintaining a lot of our historic facilities that have less current or anticipated demand,” said Jared Isaacman, administrator of NASA, “it will come directly at the expense of the next generation capabilities that are going to be essential to again, meet the mission of today and also all that we imagine go forward.”
NASA celebrated the facility’s opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Langley attended by hundreds of industry leaders, government officials and community members. Some attendees later toured the new tunnel.
The 25,000-square-foot facility contains a vertical test section measuring 20 feet in diameter and 24 feet tall. The temperature-controlled tunnel can generate wind speeds of up to 117 mph.
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“The capabilities in terms of wind speed that this can provide are much greater,” said Giovanny Guecha, technical lead for the NASA Dragonfly parachute decelerator system. “It’s almost a factor of ten compared to the previous way it’s been done. So that helps us, you know, test more stressful conditions that are closer to Venus.”
Four 750-horsepower motors power the tunnel, with each motor paired with a 14-foot-diameter, eight-bladed fan. The lightweight carbon-fiber blades allow engineers to adjust airflow quickly during free-flight testing and simulate flight at higher altitudes.
The wind tunnel will be used to test technology for future exploration of Venus and Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, as well as missions to Earth’s moon and Mars. It can also evaluate scale models of vehicles designed to travel through an atmosphere, including spacecraft returning to Earth.
“This facility will absolutely have a role in every future space mission,” said David Storch, facility manager for NASA’s transonic dynamics tunnel. “You know, anything that has to come back to earth. Absolutely.”
The facility will provide NASA and its partners with a critical resource for testing the safety and performance of future generations of aircraft, rockets, space-exploration vehicles, X-planes, drones and autonomous flight vehicles.