AFA Industry Day Presentation Final 4-23-26.pdf

This file is an industry day presentation for NASA's Aeronautics Flight Accelerator (AFA) initiative. The presentation was delivered on April 23, 2026, at the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, and provides an overview of the AFA program objectives, anticipated timelines, available NASA flight assets, and technical capabilities across NASA's aeronautics research centers. The initiative seeks to accelerate U.S. competitiveness by promoting rapid, cost-effective flight experimentation and enabling domestic manufacturing and job creation. NASA is seeking cost-shared partnerships with U.S. industry, academia, and government organizations to mature aeronautics technologies across subsonic (including vertical lift), supersonic, and hypersonic flight domains, with flight testing targeted between FY26 and FY28.

The presentation materials include descriptions of NASA's aircraft and flight testing capabilities available for partner use, technical expertise at aeronautics research centers, and guidance for potential respondents. Interested organizations were invited to submit responses to the accompanying RFI by May 7, 2026, with no limit on the number of separate ideas a single entity could propose. Organizations requesting private one-on-one meetings were required to submit a two-page executive summary and identify three preferred meeting time slots between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM. The RFI is a pre-solicitation mechanism designed to inform development of a future competitive solicitation for cost-shared projects.