NASA Investigates How People Respond to Air Taxi Noise

New kinds of aircraft taking to the skies could mean unfamiliar sounds overhead — and where you’re hearing them might matter, according to new NASA research.

NASA aeronautics has worked for years to enable new air transportation options for people and goods, and to find ways to make sure they can be safely and effectively integrated into U.S. communities. That’s why the agency continues to study how people respond to aircraft noise.  

In this case, NASA’s work focused on air taxis, shorthand for a variety of aircraft intended to carry people short distances for everything from personal travel to medical treatment. Researchers investigated whether residents in loud cities would respond differently to air taxi sounds than those in quieter suburban settings.

From late August through September 2025, 359 participants in the Los Angeles, New York City, and Dallas-Fort Worth areas took part in NASA’s Varied Advanced Air Mobility Noise and Geographic Area Response Difference (VANGARD) test.

Researchers played 67 unique sounds simulating aircraft, including NASA-owned industry concept designs. To ensure unbiased feedback, the research team withheld aircraft manufacturer names. Participants were also not shown images of the aircraft they were hearing.

Initial results reveal that residents living in noisy areas reported being more bothered by the air taxi sounds than those in quieter areas. The VANGARD team members are currently analyzing the data to better understand these findings, but so far, they’re hypothesizing that people in loud environments may simply be more sensitive to additional noise. 

“With air taxis coming soon, we need to understand how people will react to a variety of future aircraft sounds,” said Sidd Krishnamurthy, lead researcher at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “This test filled a critical gap, and its results will improve how we predict human reactions to noise, guiding the design and operation of future aircraft.”

During the study, participants listened to individual aircraft flyover sounds and rated their annoyance levels. The participants also provided their zip codes, allowing the researchers to sort their locations into high and low background noise levels.  “We wanted to know if people in low or high background noise zones would be more annoyed by the air taxi sounds, and to what extent, even without their usual background sounds present during the test,” Krishnamurthy said.

Most participants listened from their home locations, with their own audio devices. But to complement that testing, a control group of 20 people listened in-person at NASA Langley in June, using tablets and headphones with fixed audio settings.

Results showed that the control group responded similarly to those who tested from home.

Many factors influence how humans respond to aircraft noise. This study was not designed to answer every question — for example, it did not look at the potential effects of high background noise masking air taxi noise — but it provided the VANGARD team with initial insights.

The results from this study, and any follow-on efforts, will guide the design and operation of future advanced air mobility aircraft to help designers and regulators determine how and where these aircraft may fly.

This research was led under the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology project and contributes to NASA’s advanced air mobility research.  The project falls under the Advanced Air Vehicles Program within NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

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NASA Releases Report on Starliner Crewed Flight Test Investigation

At a news conference on Thursday, NASA released a report of findings from the Program Investigation Team examining the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crewed Flight Test as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.  

“The Boeing Starliner spacecraft has faced challenges throughout its uncrewed and most recent crewed missions. While Boeing built Starliner, NASA accepted it and launched two astronauts to space. The technical difficulties encountered during docking with the International Space Station were very apparent,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.  

“To undertake missions that change the world, we must be transparent about both our successes and our shortcomings. We have to own our mistakes and ensure they never happen again. Beyond technical issues, it is clear that NASA permitted overarching programmatic objectives of having two providers capable of transporting astronauts to-and-from orbit, influence engineering and operational decisions, especially during and immediately after the mission. We are correcting those mistakes. Today, we are formally declaring a Type A mishap and ensuring leadership accountability so situations like this never reoccur. We look forward to working with Boeing as both organizations implement corrective actions and return Starliner to flight only when ready.” 

Starliner launched June 5, 2024, on its first crewed test flight to the International Space Station. Originally planned as an eight-to-14-day mission, the flight was extended to 93 days after propulsion system anomalies were identified while the spacecraft was in orbit. After reviewing flight data and conducting ground test at White Sands Test Facility, NASA decided to return the spacecraft without NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Starliner returned from the space station in September 2024, landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. Wilmore and Williams later returned safely to Earth aboard the agency’s SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission in March 2025. 

In February 2025, NASA chartered an independent Program Investigation Team to investigate the technical, organizational, and cultural contributors to the test flight issues.  

This report was completed in November 2025. NASA and Boeing have been working together since Starliner returned 18 months ago to identify and address the challenges encountered during the mission, and the technical root cause work continues. 

Investigators identified an interplay of combined hardware failures, qualification gaps, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns that created risk conditions inconsistent with NASA’s human spaceflight safety standards. NASA will accept this as the final report.  

As a result, NASA is taking corrective actions to address the findings of the report, in an effort to ensure the lessons learned contribute to crew and mission safety of future Starliner flights and all NASA programs. Due to the loss of the spacecraft’s maneuverability as the crew approached the space station and the associated financial damages incurred, NASA has classified the test flight as a Type A mishap. While there were no injuries and the mission regained control prior to docking, this highest-level classification designation recognizes there was potential for a significant mishap. 

NASA will continue to work closely with Boeing to fully understand and solve the technical challenges with the Starliner vehicle alongside incorporating the investigative recommendations before flying the next mission.  

For the full report, which includes redactions in coordination with our commercial partner to protect proprietary and privacy-sensitive material is available online. A 508-compliant version of the report is forthcoming, and will be posted on this page. NASA will update with an editor’s note when complete.

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/nasa-report-with-redactions-021926.pdf?emrc=76e561

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Bethany Stevens / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

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Cheryl Warner

NASA to Provide Starliner Crew Flight Test Review Findings Today

During a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday NASA will discuss the findings of investigations into the 2024 crewed test flight of Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station.

The news conference will stream live on NASA’s YouTube channel. An instant replay will be available online.

NASA participants include:

• Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya

To ask questions during the news conference, media must RSVP no later than 30 minutes prior to the start of the call to the NASA Headquarters newsroom at: hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

For NASA’s blog and more information about the mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

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Bethany Stevens / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

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Jennifer M. Dooren

Award-Winning NASA Camera Revolutionizes How We See the Invisible

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Award-Winning NASA Camera Revolutionizes How We See the Invisible

Imagine trying to photograph wind. That’s similar to what NASA engineers dealt with during a recent effort to study how air moves around planes, rockets, and other kinds of aerospace vehicles. Air is invisible, but our understanding of how it flows is crucial for building better, safer aircraft.

For 80 years, researchers used a technique called “focused schlieren imaging.” Think of it as a special camera system that can “see” air movement by detecting tiny changes in its density. It’s the same effect that lets you to see heat waves rising from hot pavement on a sunny day — just much more precise.

The Self-Aligned Focusing Schlieren (SAFS) system is a game-changer. It’s a compact, low-cost, easy-to-use visualization tool that is less complex than traditional focusing schlieren systems.

“What makes this breakthrough compelling is the ripple effect,” said NASA’s Brett Bathel, who invented the SAFS alongside fellow engineer Joshua Weisberger at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “When researchers can see and understand air movement in ways that were previously difficult to achieve, it leads to better aircraft designs and safer flights for everyone.”

Switching from older systems to SAFS in wind tunnels and other specialized research environments allows aerospace engineers to gather high-speed flow visualization data more efficiently, with less facility downtime, and lower costs. For the aviation industry, it opens doors to new discoveries, potentially revolutionizing how we design everything from commercial airliners to spacecraft.

With SAFS in its toolbox, NASA is also better positioned to meet its mission goals related to efficiency and safety in aviation and space. Researchers are using SAFS to capture flow separation on the High Lift Common Research Model, a tool for improving how accurately we can predict the takeoff and landing performance of new aircraft. And it’s helping them investigate shock cell structures — diamond shapes that form in exhaust plumes — for the Space Launch System model.

The NASA technology is already being used worldwide, adopted by over 50 institutions in more than 8 countries, from Notre Dame to the University of Liverpool. Companies continue to license the technology and commercial versions are hitting the market.

The impact has been so significant that NASA’s researchers earned multiple awards. R&D World gave SAFS a spot on its 2025 R&D 100 Awards, selected by a panel of global experts.

NASA also named the SAFS a 2025 NASA Government Invention of the Year, the highest award the agency gives to groundbreaking technologies.

Giant Leap Ahead

To understand why the SAFS is a big deal, you need to know what researchers were working with before.

The older focused schlieren imaging setup required researchers to have access to both sides of what they were testing. They needed to set up separate grids of light sources on each side and align them perfectly with each other. It’s the equivalent of lining up two window screens on opposite sides of a room so their patterns match exactly.

Setting up one of these systems could take weeks of painstaking adjustments, and if someone accidentally bumped the system or needed to make an adjustment? Start over.

Enter the SAFS system. In 2020, NASA researchers asked a critical question: What would happen if they could eliminate all that complexity by using the properties of light itself?

The solution? Light polarization. Your polarized sunglasses work by filtering light in specific directions. The SAFS system does something similar, using light polarization to create the same effect as the older, cumbersome dual-grid setup. The SAFS system only requires access to one side of the object you’re testing. And, instead of needing two separate grids that must be perfectly aligned, it uses just one grid that does double duty.

What used to take weeks of setup now takes just minutes. Need to make adjustments? No problem. The SAFS system can tweak sensitivity, change its field of view, or adjust focus on the fly. The system is compact and immune to vibrations (goodbye, starting-over-because-someone-walked-by).

Sometimes revolutionary advances come not from adding complexity, but from finding new creative solutions to age-old problems. The SAFS is proof that there’s always room for innovation — and this one is already making its mark on the world.

The work on SAFS was supported through NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities portfolio office and Transformational Tools and Technologies project, which works to develop new computational tools to help predict aircraft performance. The project is part of NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program under its Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

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