NASA Drop Test Supports Safer Air Taxi Designs

As the aviation industry works to design air taxis and other new electric aircraft, there’s a growing need to understand how the materials behave. That’s why NASA is investigating potential air taxi materials and designs to best protect passengers in the event of a crash.

On June 26, 2025, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, researchers dropped a full-scale aircraft body modeled after an air taxi from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry.

The NASA researchers behind this test and a previous one in late 2022 investigated materials that best absorb impact forces, generating data that will enable manufacturers to design safer advanced air mobility aircraft.

Image Credit: NASA/Mark Knopp