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The environmental impact of hydrocarbon-burning aircraft, both from the perspective of gas emissions and that of noise, is one of the main motivations for the move to electric propulsion. The added benefit from this shift to electric propulsion is that it has resulted in lowering the costs of electrical components such as motors, power electronic (PE) circuits, and batteries that are essential to this technology. This white paper seeks to explore the history, architecture, electrical components, and future trends of electric flight technology.

NASA has embarked on an ambitious program to integrate additive manufacturing techniques and to develop processes for the microgravity environment. The most recent example of this program is the successful launch and deployment of the first 3D printer on the International Space Station. In this one-year effort, students were required to meet a series of milestones to design, manufacture, and test their ideas in close cooperation with members of the NASA Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) concept team.The participants in this project were tasked with thinking of new solutions using AM that would simultaneously be recyclable with minimal loss in mechanical properties but also have the capacity for high mechanical properties. Working in interdisciplinary teams, the participant teams investigated the use of recycled materials, characterization, testing, modeling, and tool development.