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The jointly developed interlocking paver design consists of a molded solid material with tapered interlocking features that interface with features of an opposite gender in three orthogonal directions. This establishes a toleranced connection between the pavers that locks down six degrees of freedom. More specifically, the system consists of two types of pavers: polygon and spacer pavers. Both are symmetrical about the longitudinal and transverse axes and are designed to interlock securely with one another in a checkerboard pattern. The polygon paver features an octagonal top level and a rectangular bottom level with protrusions and recessed notches. The spacer paver has an elongated center portion with isosceles trapezoid extensions on the top level and a rectangular bottom level with protrusions and notches. The interlocking design locks down six degrees of freedom, providing enhanced stability and preventing the flow of exhaust gases between the seams to mitigate erosion of the underlying regolith. The pavers could be constructed leveraging in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Lunar regolith has been identified as a potential construction material. Additionally, the pavers could be installed via robotic assembly, reducing the need for human labor in harsh environments.

This NASA-developed eVTOL UAS is a purpose-built, electric, reusable aircraft with rotor/propeller thrust only, designed to fly trajectories with high similarity to those flown by lunar landers. The vehicle has the unique capability to transition into wing borne flight to simulate the cross-range, horizontal approaches of lunar landers. During transition to wing borne flight, the initial transition favors a traditional airplane configuration with the propellers in the front and smaller surfaces in the rear, allowing the vehicle to reach high speeds. However, after achieving wing borne flight, the vehicle can transition to wing borne flight in the opposite (canard) direction. During this mode of operation, the vehicle is controllable, and the propellers can be powered or unpowered. This NASA invention also has the capability to decelerate rapidly during the descent phase (also to simulate lunar lander trajectories). Such rapid deceleration will be required to reduce vehicle velocity in order to turn propellers back on without stalling the blades or catching the propeller vortex. The UAS also has the option of using variable pitch blades which can contribute to the overall controllability of the aircraft and reduce the likelihood of stalling the blades during the deceleration phase. In addition to testing EDL sensors and precision landing payloads, NASA’s innovative eVTOL UAS could be used in applications where fast, precise, and stealthy delivery of payloads to specific ground locations is required, including military applications. This concept of operations could entail deploying the UAS from a larger aircraft.

Proprotors on tiltrotor aircraft have complex aeroelastic properties, experiencing torsion, bending, and chord movement vibrational modes, in addition to whirl flutter dynamic instabilities. These dynamics can be stabilized by high-frequency swashplate adjustments to alter the incidence angle between the swashplate and the rotor shaft (cyclic control) and blade pitch (collective control). To make these high-speed adjustments while minimizing control inputs, generalized predictive control (GPC) algorithms predict future outputs based on previous system behavior. However, these algorithms are limited by the fact that tiltrotor systems can substantially change in orientation and airspeed during a normal flight regime, breaking system continuity for predictive modeling. NASA’s Advanced GPC (AGPC) is a self-adaptive algorithm that overcomes these limitations by identifying system changes and adapting its predictive behavior as flight conditions change. If system vibration conditions deteriorate below a set threshold for a set time interval, the AGPC will incrementally update its model parameters to improve damping response. AGPC has shown significant performance enhancements over conventional GPC algorithms in comparative simulations based on an analytical model of NASA’s TiltRotor Aeroelastic Stability Testbed (TRAST). Research for Hardware-In-the-Loop testing and flight vehicle deployment is ongoing, and hover data show improved vibration reduction and stability performance using AGPC over other methods. The example presented here is an application to tiltrotor aircraft for envelope expansion and vibration reduction. However, AGPC can be employed on many dynamic systems.

This invention, developed under the Rotor Optimization for the Advancement of Mars eXploration (ROAMX) project, provides a method for optimizing airfoil geometries for aerial flight vehicles generally, and can also specifically optimize airfoil geometries for operating in Martian or other low Reynolds number environments. The method introduces a new “ROAMX parameterization” that defines geometric constraints, such as camber node count and the number and order of Bézier curve segments, to generate candidate airfoil shapes. A genetic algorithm evaluates these shapes against multiple objectives and iteratively selects the best-performing designs, converging on a Pareto-optimal front. This enables simultaneous optimization of metrics such as maximizing lift and minimizing drag. Using the ROAMX 1301 parameterization, the method produced an airfoil with lift to drag ratio improvements of up to 42% over the outboard airfoil used on the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, representing a significant performance gain.